We blogged recently about IFLA’s Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group's preparations for the next #1Lib1Ref campaign, which runs from 15th May to 5th June 2021. The Wikidata project page for this work is here, which includes resources, such as this Zine about Wikidata.

Barnstar for partcipation in the 1lib1ref 2021 campaign, created for Polish Wikipedia, featuring the Owl of Athena symbol. If you don't know what a barnstar is, there is an explanation here.

There is a recording of the Train-The-Trainers workshop run by Meg Wacha, which took place on Wednesday 21st April, now available to watch on YouTube and the slidedeck from this session is here. Meg's presentation gave a great overview on how librarians can run events in their libraries to contribute to Wikidata during the #1Lib1Ref campaign period. Useful urls mentioned in this session, include:

• Wikimedia movement affiliates (How to find your local Wikimedia chapter)
• Wikidata's Community portal
• Slides on how to set-up a dashboard for 1Lib1Ref on Wikidata
• Wikidata Professional Development Training Modules by Wiki Education
• Wikidata Tours (Shows how Wikidata works and teaches how to add data)
• The University of Edinburgh's Wikimedian in Residence webpages on Wikidata

As a follow on from the Train-The-Trainers workshop, the IFLA group are hosting a series of five upcoming Wikidata in #1Lib1Ref online office hours, these have been scheduled for different times in the day, to support participation from all parts of the world. These sessions aim to provide librarians with opportunities to discuss Wikidata work with international colleagues. See below for details of dates and times:

• Wednesday 5th May at 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST/The Hague, 14:00 UTC
• Tuesday 11th May at 23:00 BST, 00:00 CEST /The Hague, 22:00 UTC 
• Wednesday 19th May at 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST/ The Hague, 14:00 UTC 
• Wednesday 26th May at 07:00 BST, 08:00 CEST/The Hague, 06:00 UTC
• Tuesday 1st June at 23:00 BST, 00:00 CEST/The Hague, 22:00 UTC

To book to attend these #1Lib1Ref online office hours, please fill in this online form and you will be sent the Zoom link. If you have any questions about them, please contact Camille Francoise ([email protected]). 

We also want to give a shout out to the LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group, who hold bi-weekly Affinity Group Calls, Wikidata Working Hours, Wikibase and WBStack Working Hours throughout the year. Finally, being librarians, we recommend checking out this Bibliography of Wikidata, a continuously updated list of books, academic conference presentations, peer-reviewed papers and other types of academic writing, which focus on Wikidata as their subject.

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian) & Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom). They will both be at the #1Lib1Ref online office hour on Wednesday 5th May.

It is wonderful to be collaborating with Leeds Libraries on their online Games Jam this month, which is encouraging people to create playful interactive adaptations of books in the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World list.

Eye-catching artwork for the Games Jam created by Amy Evans (@tiger_tea) https://www.tiger-tea.co.uk/

In my experience game jams are a brilliant way of bringing historic and literary digital library and archive collections to life in a completely new way. I’ve ran a few at the British Library and I’m always keen to share what I’ve learned with other libraries, including contributing to Living Knowledge Network skills sharing events, such as one we held on the topic of games and playfulness in libraries, in November 2017 at Leeds Central Library, you can read more about this here.

@_jerryjenkins @ggnewed & @ella_snell doing a puzzle escape game in a box by @lizcable at a #LivingKnowledgeNetwork skills day (image © Stella Wisdom)

There are endless possibilities for adapting works of literature into games and interactive experiences. Earlier this year I attended an Oxford/London IF meetup group online event, where Emily Short gave a fascinating talk about the storylet game design process for creating Orwell’s Animal Farm an indie adventure game, which is based on George Orwell’s novel, where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. There is a review of this game here.

Leeds Libraries have programmed a range of online events to inspire creativity, as part of their games jam. Last week I attended a thought provoking workshop led by Liz Cable on how to create literary escape rooms. It made me think of a very atmospheric Dracula inspired escape room called Carfax, situated in a sandstone cave system, which I had visited in Nottingham a few years ago. During the covid-19 pandemic Cave Escape have reworked this game into an online escape experience called Carfax - The Hunter, so anyone can play a version of this game from home.

Liz has a wealth of knowledge about all types of game making tools, apps and platforms, which she generously shares. I first met her at the MIX conference at Bath Spa University back in 2015, where she took me and a few other conference delegates to an escape room in Bath. This was the first time I had been to one; so it was Liz who opened my eyes to a new world of escape game experiences! 

There are still more excellent Leeds Libraries Games Jam online events coming up this week:

• On Wednesday 21^st April Rhian Isaac and Josh Flint from Leeds Libraries will discuss the real life histories behind some of the well-known books from the BBC Novels That Shaped Our World list, register here for the Behind the Books event.
• On Thursday 22^nd April Ann Jones from Cards or Die board gaming will be running a workshop on Rule Breakers - Creating a world with components. Ann has ran three previous workshops on 1. Adventure: Co-operative Games, 2. Life, Death and other worlds - solo games and voting, and 3. Crime and Conflict - programming, asymmetry and silence.
• On Friday 23^rd April there is a Game Creation event with Leeds Libraries and Leeds Museums.
• On Saturday 24^th April, I’ll be in conversation on a panel with Liz Cable and Ann Jones, which will be followed by an event where VR artist Rosie Summers will create an interpretation of Narnia using Tilt Brush.

1 WEEK! Till my live #VR performance with @leedslibraries ✨

Travel with me through the virtual wardrobe and into the fantastical Narnia! Join me live as I paint this magical Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe tribute, in VR. 💫❄️https://t.co/qaJUeI2xh6

See you there! #tiltbrush pic.twitter.com/ZcqROpQZqX

— Rosie Summers 🥽✨ (@VR_Rosie) April 17, 2021

All these events can be booked from Leeds Libraries Eventbrite page and if you want to watch recordings of previous events, check out their Novels That Shaped Our World YouTube playlist.

The Novels that Shaped Our World jam itself is taking place over Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April. Thanks to Libraries Connected and Arts Council England there is a £150 prize for the winner and two £50 prizes for the runners up. More information can be found here.

If you are considering taking part, but are unsure where to start, then you may also be interested in reading this Writing Tools for Interactive Fiction blog post by my colleague Giulia Carla Rossi, which describes a number of free online tools that don’t require any previous programming knowledge. I also recommend joining the jam's Facebook group, where participants can talk to each other and ask questions. Good luck if you make and submit a game, I’m looking forward to reading and playing the entries.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

Since starting at the Library at the beginning of March, one of the highlights of my working week has been meeting with the IFLA Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group. IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations, a global body representing the interests of libraries worldwide.

This working group ‘aims to coordinate actions, events and preparation of documents to leverage Wikidata and Wikibase in support of documenting collections and support capacity building in linked data, structured data, and cataloguing work’. For the last six weeks, myself and Digital Curator Stella Wisdom, have been working alongside collaborators from such disparate locations as Jerusalem, New York and Toronto, amongst others, to prepare materials, events and opportunities for the upcoming #1lib1ref campaign.

The next #1Lib1Ref runs from 15th May to 5th June 2021. This campaign, run by the Wikimedia Foundation, invites library staff and patrons to improve the reliability of sources in Wikipedia. Using the philosophy of ‘1 librarian, 1 reference’ the campaign focusses on filling in the gaps of missing references – if just one person adds just one reference, think of what we could do collectively! Full information can be found at the #1Lib1Ref Wikimedia page.

Ahead of this upcoming #1Lib1Ref, IFLA’s Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group are offering a Train-The-Trainers workshop, for up to 50 participants, on Wednesday 21st April at 16:00 CET. This training session, run by Meg Wacha of City University, New York, will show participants how to set up an event to contribute to Wikidata during the #1Lib1Ref campaign period. More details and registration for this online event on Wednesday 21st April can be found on the IFLA website here.

The group will provide resources that can help you learn how to edit Wikidata, and demonstrate the advantages that Wikidata provides for library collections. They will also be holding online weekly informal open office hours throughout May and early June, in which participants can seek advice and guidance from experienced Wikimedians. The British Library will be hosting one of these virtual office hour sessions on Wednesday 5^th of May at 3pm BST, details about these and how to book can be found here.

We hope to see you there!

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian)

The British Library and the British Fashion Council held a Virtual Awards Ceremony on 22^nd March to celebrate the results of the 2021 research inspired fashion design competition, part of an innovative collaboration between the British Library and the British Fashion Council. The event showcased examples of what has inspired a new generation of fashion designers who have explored the richness and potential of the Library’s extensive digital collections for a design project based on themes of ‘Identity’ or ‘Disruption’.

Earlier in the day a winner was selected by a panel of judges comprised of respected industry individuals including Anna Orsini, Strategic Consultant, British Fashion Council; Dal Chodha, Editor of non-seasonal publication Archivist, Writer & Consultant; Halina Edwards, Researcher, Lead Designer at The Black Curriculum and by the Library’s Daniel Lowe - Curator Arabic Collections. Nabil El Nayal, Designer and Course Leader MA Fashion Design Technology Womenswear, London College of Fashion undertook an advisory role for the judging day and the panel was chaired by Judith Rosser-Davies, Head of Government Relations & Education, Chair Colleges Council, British Fashion Council.  

In addition to the Judges' Award, an additional award - the Public Award was voted for by the online audience at the Awards event.

 

The Judges' Award

The winner of the Judges Award was Adela Babinska, MA Womenswear Student at the London College of Fashion. Her submission ‘NOT’ reflected on the absence of knowledge and on the need for persisting curiosity in our challenging times.

Winning entry by Adela Babinska

Adela arrived in London during lockdown from Slovakia as an international student and found herself in a strange new reality of being a London student in Covid times – studying online, meeting her colleagues and tutors online, and responding to our fashion competition without ever visiting the Library. Just as many other students, she discovered that the access to online resources, including at the British Library, is limited and, also, that she cannot complete the Library’s registration process during the lockdown. Normally in her research Adela would search for the answers, but in the absence of being able to visit the Library and with only limited access to online content, she found herself in a disruptive position, so she decided to explore how she could benefit from this.

In her submission, Adela referenced the same emotion that she felt after reading Waiting for Godot – which prompts many questions, but does not provide the answers. Rather than search for the answers she reflected that she needed to search for the questions and decided to generate as many queries as possible about the Library and to use these to guide her designs, including the intangibility of the Library during lockdown. Her research for this project led her to see that the mere act of not knowing can also be powerful.

Her thinking and questioning included a conceptualisation of the icon image on the Customer Services section of the BL website in relation to impersonality and distance. She also reflected on what accessing the BL Sound archives could bring to her research and referenced a recording of the foyer of the Library in which she could hear voices which made the Library seem more real to her.

As well as producing a fantastic fashion presentation, Adela’s experience and search for the Library amidst the current disruptions provides both a challenging and inspirational view of the Library from a student perspective.

 

The Public Award

The winner of the Public Award is Chiara Lamon, Fashion and Textile Student from Gray’s School of Art, based at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, with her submission ‘Morphe’.

Designs from the public award winner Chiara Lamon

 

Chiara analysed the idea of a malleable and dynamic identity through a study of body movement.  Her research approach focused on disrupting common ideas of the stillness and singularity of our identity. Using the Library’s online collections, she explored visual imagery, blogs, thematic pages books and ideas which she considered had a high impact on the quality and depth of her research. This experience helped Chiara reflect on how she now conducts research - researching opposites, making mistakes and looking for the unexpected, letting the research lead her rather than trying to control it.

Chiara’s research involved exploring the catalogues on futurism and cubism and discovering connection and metaphors in unexpected ways, such as from images of geological strata from the Library’s Flickr collection to represent layers of the self, building on the concept of the body multiple.

Engaging with practice led research Chiara was able to explore ideas from a digital and physical development for a more sustainable practice. Images that Chiara used from the Library’s digital collections included the work of photographer Ethienne Jules, images from geology and dance and a comparison of a multiple collar garment from Viktor and Rolf’s Autumn /Winter 2003 collection paired with an early portrait of a man in a collared shirt.

Chiara turned images from BL collections and abstracted forms into shapes to apply to the body as an experience for a multifaceted and morphing representation of the self and our dynamic nature.

 

The Finalists

Eight finalists were shortlisted from a strong field of 111 submissions for this year’s competition.

The six other finalists were:

Jordan Fergusson, Manchester Metropolitan University

Jordan's submission ‘The Tearlachs’, is based on a theme of disrupting the codes of highland dress and exploring gender. Jordan reflected on Jacobite poetry and song using multiple images, manuscripts and letters from the BL Collection and extracts from a Jacobite Songbook from 1863. The depictions in this book gave Jordan a strong sense of the character of a Tearlach (instigator).  Jordan presents the Tearlachs as gender non-conforming trailblazers of the highlands, embodying the Jacobite cause and romanticism of Scottish History. In designing his collection, Jordan used himself as a blank canvas to build up inspiration transferring it to 2D then back to 3D. His research led to Jordan to design a ‘warped tartan’ as his own interpretation of a’Tearlach Tartan’, inspired by graph-like images of the Aurora Borealis from the BL Collection.

Maria Fernanda Nava Melgar, Royal College of Art

Maria’s submission ‘The Invisibles’ explored identity through fundamental questions such as to what are we made of, how we are perceived and how are we are listened to. Her work took inspiration from chiaroscuro scientific paintings from the 18^th Century, medical journals and distorted sound recordings (Touch Radio) from the BL Collection.  Images of decay and cells were used to inform the design of her collection. Maria reflected on the relationship between light, space and sound and the human body and how the body is information made out of layers that are constantly being pressed and crushed against each other whist working together inside a system.

Emma Fraser, Gray’s School of Art, (Robert Gordon University Aberdeen)

Emma’s submission ‘Repair Yourself’ was based on a following a powerful, moving journey as a survivor of sexual assault and her message to other survivors that they are not alone. Emma used visual metaphors to explore the idea of trauma and recovery initially starting with the concept of damage and repair, reflected through her textile work and then through ideas of comfort and exposure. Another aspect of her work was exploring the over-sexualising of women and the idea of femininity by researching the BL archives.  Her submission included images from the Library’s s Flickr Collection -Women of the World. Emma intended her work as a representation of the courage and strength that it takes to go on such a journey of recovery, confirming that it was ‘not about the attackers, but about the survivors’.

Kelsey Ann Kasom, Royal College of Art        

Kelsey’s submission ‘Identity’ is based on the concept of the left side of her brain being her inner child the ‘past’ and right side of her brain being her creative genius – the ‘present’. Using research and images form the BL Collection her work focused on what can be created from harmonising these two aspects. Kelsey explored abstract feelings and surreal thought working to make sense of them three dimensionally ‘as an extension of the soul outside the body’. Kelsey experimented with the technical aspects of working with organza creating shapes for the body

Louise Korner, London College of Fashion

Louise’s submission ‘The Becoming’ focused on the theme of disruption as a design approach using a destructive force such as fire, (by watching objects burning), to lead to a greater understanding of fire as a transformative process and also to highlight current issues surrounding the fashion industry.  Using images and art work from the 18^th century from BL Collections, including an image of a forest fire, Louise reflected on what is left after the disruption of the landscape and what is regenerated after the fire. Louise used a disruptive approach to her research of the BL catalogues by mis - spelling words and entering words backwards in order ‘to stumble across an interesting recording or sound or art work.’ Her research led to her designing a ‘hidden garment withing a garment’ that the wearer decides when to reveal and garments that are sustainable that can be returned to the designer for repurposing.

Cameron Lyall, Gray’s School of Art, (Robert Gordon University Aberdeen)

Cameron’s submission ‘No Place’ is inspired by a theme of identity. It tells a story of the ‘pilgrim of no place’ and their journey, both physically and mentally to understand their own identity. This journey involves the pilgrim reflecting on history and what they have learnt and applying this to ‘a future forward-thinking attitude.’ Cameron’s concept was in response to his own journey in 2020.  His work included images from ancient philosophies, celestial esoterica and astrology from the BL Collection. For his designs, Cameron dissembled and reconstructed garments, some of which took on ‘symbiotic shapes reminiscent of beetles’ purposing and rebranding these garments into new concepts.

For any further information, email [email protected].

Hello, I’m Dr Lucy Hinnie and I’ve just joined the Digital Scholarship team as the new Wikimedian-in-Residence, in conjunction with Wikimedia UK and the Eccles Centre. My role is to work with the Library to develop and support colleagues with projects using Wikidata, Wikibase and Wikisource.

Bringing underrepresented people and marginalised communities to the fore is a huge part of this remit, and I am looking to be as innovative in our partnerships as we can be, with a view to furthering the movement towards decolonisation. I’m going to be working with curators and members of staff throughout the Library to identify and progress opportunities to accelerate this work.

I have recently returned from a two-year stay in Canada, where I lived and worked on Treaty Six territory and the homeland of the Métis. Working and living in Saskatchewan was a hugely formative experience for me, and highlighted the absolute necessity of forward-thinking, reconciliatory work in decolonisation.

Wanuskewin Heritage Park, Saskatoon, December 2020

2020 was my year of immersion in Wikimedia – I participated in a number of events, including outreach work by Dr Erin O’Neil at the University of Alberta, Women in Red edit-a-thons with Ewan McAndrew at the University of Edinburgh and the Unfinished Business edit-a-thon run by Leeds Libraries and the British Library. In December 2020 I coordinated and ran my own Wikithon in conjunction with the National Library of Scotland, as part of my postdoctoral project ‘Digitising the Bannatyne MS’.

Front page of the Bannatyne MS, National Library of Scotland, Adv MS 1.1.6. (CC BY 4.0)

Since coming into post at the start of this March I have worked hard to make connections with organisations such as IFLA, Code the City and Art+Feminism. I’ve also been creating introductory materials to engage audiences with Wikidata, and thinking about how best to utilise the coming months.

Andrew Gray took up post as the first British Library Wikipedian in Residence nearly ten years ago, you can read more about this earlier residency here and here. Much has changed since then, but reflection on the legacy of Wikimedia activity is a crucial part of ensuring that the work we do is useful, engaging, vibrant and important. I want to use creative thinking to produce output that opens up BL digital collections in relevant, culturally sensitive and engaging ways.

I am excited to get started! I’ll be blogging here regularly about my residency, so please do subscribe to this blog to follow my progress.

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian)

The works and worlds created by Shakespeare have an enduring appeal, his writing emotionally resonates with audiences today, despite being written over four hundred year's ago. This week is Shakespeare Week, and today is also the first day of the London Games Festival, so a perfect time to reflect on some interactive digital adaptations of the bard's plays. 

Back in 2016 here in the British Library we ran a Shakespeare themed Off the Map competition, which set students a task of creating video games and virtual interactive environments using digitised British Library items, including maps, views, texts, book illustrations and recorded sounds as creative inspiration. The first place winning entry by Team Quattro from De Montfort University in Leicester, created an adaptation of The Tempest, you can see a flythrough video clip of their stunning work here.

In this competition, Tom Battey who was then a student at the London College of Communication was awarded second place with a game called Midsummer based on the characters in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream and which used digitised engravings from John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery. This is a clever work, set in a magical woodland, where trees and bushes generate as the player wanders through the game. The player has the power to enchant and disenchant characters they meet to fall in love with each other, or not! The dialogue between these characters then changes depending on whether they are lovestruck, you can watch a demo of this game here.

Cake from MissionMaker Macbeth launch event at the British Library in 2019

Another digital Shakespeare project, which the Library has been involved in, is MissionMaker Macbeth, a game-authoring tool, developed by the MAGiCAL team, from D.A.R.E. enterprise at the UCL Knowledge Lab, which was launched at the British Library for the London Games Festival in 2019. Built using Unity, this software incorporates characters, landscapes, objects and even cauldron ingredients for children to make digital games based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. For anyone wanting to read more about this project, Andrew Burn has written a book Literature, Videogames and Learning, which is due to be published on 20th July 2021.

If virtual woodland walks are your thing, although not Shakespeare related, you may want to explore Faint Signals, by Invisible Flock, this is an interactive website, where you can wander through the woodland as it changes through all four seasons, and evolves from day to night. Also, if you are reading this in time, you may be able to catch a live online performance of Dream, by the Royal Shakespeare Company. This Midsummer Night’s Dream inspired 50-minute online event is set in a virtual midsummer forest, which offers participants a unique opportunity to directly influence the live performance, read more about this here.

For literature loving games makers, you may want to take part in Leeds Libraries upcoming online Novels That Shaped Our World Games Jam, which is running on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April 2021. This jam invites people to create games inspired by the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. They have planned an inspiring programme of online events connected to this jam, tickets will be available from Monday 22nd March 2021 from their Eventbrite page: leeds-libraries.eventbrite.com.

Leeds Libraries games jam events programme

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

Can you read and write in Bangla? Or should I say আপনি কি বাংলা পড়তে এবং লিখতে পারেন? If you were able to read that, congratulations, you are the perfect candidate!

You might be interested in a competition we have launched today asking for help to proofread text that has been automatically transcribed from our historical Bengali books. The competition, in partnership with the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, and the Bengali Wikisource community, will run until 14^th April and invites contributors to create perfect transcriptions of the books.  

More information is available on the Wikisource competition page, including how to get started and prizes on offer.

The books have been digitised through our Two Centuries of Indian Print project, with more than 25 uploaded to Wikisource, an online and free-content digital library where it is possible to view the digitised books and corresponding transcriptions side-by-side. We were inspired by a talk given by the National Library of Scotland who uploaded some of their collections to Wikisource, and thought it could be a useful platform to increase online access to the textual content in our books too.

 

Above: A view of a Bengali book within the Wikisource platform showing digitised page [R] and transcription [L]

 

Luckily a lot of the transcription work has already been done through using Google’s Optical Character Recognition technology (OCR) to read the Bengali text. However, the results are not perfect, with words in the original books often misspelled in the OCR. That’s where we need human intervention to proofread the OCR and fix the mistakes.

We also want to export proofread transcriptions from Wikisource and make them available as a dataset that could prove interesting to researchers who want to mine thousands of pages of text.

The books we would like proofread cover a multitude of topics and include an adaptation of the Illiad, a book containing a collection of 19^th century proverbs and sayings, and a work describing the Bratas fasting ceremonies observed by the Hindu women of what is now Bangladesh. So, if you are looking for a literary indulgence whilst at the same time helping to improve access for others to valuable historical material, this could be an ideal opportunity.

 

This post is by Digital Curator Tom Derrick (@TommyID83)

Keen followers of this blog may remember a post from last December, which shared details of a virtual workshop about AI and Archives: Current Challenges and Prospects of Digital and Born-digital archives. This topic was one of three workshop themes identified by the Archives in the UK/Republic of Ireland & AI (AURA) network, which is a forum promoting discussions on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be applied to cultural heritage archives, and to explore issues with providing access to born digital and hybrid digital/physical collections.

The first AURA workshop on Open Data versus Privacy organised by Annalina Caputo from Dublin City University, took place on 16-17 November 2020. Rachel MacGregor provides a great write-up of this event here.

Here at the British Library, we teamed up with our friends at The National Archives to curate the second AURA workshop exploring the current challenges and prospects of born-digital archives, this took place online on 28-29 January 2021. The first day of the workshop held on 28 January was organised by The National Archives, you can read more about this day here, and the following day, 29 January, was organised by the BL, videos and slides for this can be found on the AURA blog and I've included them in this post.

The format for both days of the second AURA workshop comprised of four short presentations, two interactive breakout room sessions and a wider round-table discussion. The aim being that the event would generate dialogue around key challenges that professionals across all sectors are grappling with, with a view to identifying possible solutions.

The first day covered issues of access both from infrastructural and user’s perspectives, plus the ethical implications of the use of AI and advanced computational approaches to archival practices and research. The second day discussed challenges of access to email archives, and also issues relating to web archives and emerging format collections, including web-based interactive narratives. A round-up of  the second day is below, including recorded videos of the presentations for anyone unable to attend on the day.

Kicking off day two, a warm welcome to the workshop attendees was given by Rachel Foss, Head of Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts at the British Library, Larry Stapleton, Senior academic and international consultant from the Waterford Institute of Technology and Mathieu d’ Aquin, Professor of Informatics at the National University of Ireland Galway.

The morning session on Email Archives: challenges of access and collaborative initiatives was chaired by David Kirsch, Associate Professor, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. This featured two presentations:

The first of these was  about Working with ePADD: processes, challenges and collaborative solutions in working with email archives, by Callum McKean, Curator for Contemporary Literary and Creative Archives, British Library and Jessica Smith, Creative Arts Archivist, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. Their slides can be viewed here and here. Apologies that the recording of Callum's talk is clipped, this was due to connectivity issues on the day.

The second presentation was Finding Light in Dark Archives: Using AI to connect context and content in email collections by Stephanie Decker, Professor of History and Strategy, University of Bristol and Santhilata Venkata, Digital Preservation Specialist & Researcher at The National Archives in the UK.

After their talks, the speakers proposed questions and challenges that attendees could discuss in smaller break-out rooms. Questions given by speakers of the morning session were:

1. Are there any other appraisal or collaborative considerations that might improve our practices and offer ways forward?
2. What do we lose by emphasizing usability for researchers?
3. Should we start with how researchers want to use email archives now and in the future, rather than just on preservation?
4. Potentialities of email archives as organizational, not just individual?

These questions led to discussions about, file formats, collection sizes, metadata standards and ways to interpret large data sets. There was interest in how email archives might allow researchers to reconstruct corporate archives, e.g. understand social dynamics of the office and understand decision making processes. It was felt that there is a need to understand the extent to which email represents organisation-level context. More questions were raised including:

• To what extent is it part of the organisational records and how should it be treated?
• How do you manage the relationship between constant organisational functions and structure (a CEO) and changing individuals?
• Who will be looking at organisational email in the future and how?

It was mentioned that there is a need to distinguish between email as data and email as an artifact, as the use-cases and preservation needs may be markedly different.

Duties of care that exist between depositors, tool designers, archivists and researchers was discussed and a question was asked about how we balance these?

• Managing human burden
• Differing levels of embargo
• Institutional frameworks

There was discussion of the research potential for comparing email and social media collections, e.g. tweet archives and also the difficulties researchers face in getting access to data sets. The monetary value of email archives was also raised and it was mentioned that perceived value, hasn’t been translated into monetary value.

Researcher needs and metadata was another topic brought up by attendees, it was suggested that the information about collections in online catalogues needs to be descriptive enough for researchers to decide if they wish to visit an institution, to view digital collections on a dedicated terminal. It was also suggested that archives and libraries need to make access restrictions, and the reasoning for these, very clear to users. This would help to manage expectations, so that researchers will know when to visit on-site because remote access is not possible. It was mentioned that it is challenging to identify use cases, but it was noted that without deeper understanding of researcher needs, it can be hard to make decisions about access provision.

It was acknowledged that the demands on human-processing are still high for born digital archives, and the relationship between tools and professionals still emergent. So there was a question about whether researchers could be involved in collaborations more, and to what extent will there be an onus on their responsibilities and liabilities in relation to usage of born digital archives?

Lots of food for thought before the break for lunch!

The afternoon session chaired by Nicole Basaraba, Postdoctoral Researcher, Studio Europa, Maastricht University, discussed Emerging Formats, Interactive Narratives and Socio-Cultural Questions in AI.

The first afternoon presentation Collecting Emerging Formats: Capturing Interactive Narratives in the UK Web Archive was given by Lynda Clark, Post-doctoral research fellow in Narrative and Play at InGAME: Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise, University of Dundee, and Giulia Carla Rossi, Curator for Digital Publications, British Library. Their slides can be viewed here.  

The second afternoon session was Women Reclaiming AI: a collectively designed AI Voice Assistant by Coral Manton, Lecturer in Creative Computing, Bath Spa University, her slides can be seen here.

Following the same format as in the morning, after these presentations, the speakers proposed questions and challenges that attendees could discuss in smaller break-out rooms. Questions given by speakers of the afternoon session were:

1. Should we be collecting examples of AIs, as well as using AI to preserve collections? What are the Implications of this
2. How do we get more people to feel that they can ask questions about AI?
3. How do we use AI to think about the complexity of what identity is and how do we engineer it so that technologies work for the benefit of everyone?

There was a general consensus, which acknowledged that AI is becoming a significant and pervasive part of our life. However it was felt that there are many aspects we don't fully understand. In the breakout groups workshop participants raised more questions, including:

• Where would AI-based items sit in collections?
• Why do we want it?
• How to collect?
• What do we want to collect? User interactions? The underlying technology? Many are patented technologies owned by corporations, so this makes it challenging. 
• What would make AI more accessible?
• Some research outputs may be AI-based - do we need to collect all the code, or just the end experience produced? If the latter, could this be similar to documenting evidence e.g. video/sound recordings or transcripts.
• Could or should we use AI to collect? Who’s behind the AI? Who gets to decide what to archive and how? Who’s responsible for mistakes/misrepresentations made by the AI?

There was debate about how to define AI in terms of a publication/collection item, it was felt that an understanding of this would help to decide what archives and libraries should be collecting, and understand what is not being collected currently. It was mentioned that a need for user input is a critical factor in answering questions like this. A number of challenges of collecting using AI were raised in the group discussions, including:

• Lack of standardisation in formats and metadata
• Questions of authorship and copyright
• Ethical considerations
• Engagement with creators/developers

It was suggested that full scale automation is not completely desirable and some kind of human element is required for specialist collections. However, AI might be useful for speeding up manual human work.

There was discussion of problems of bias in data, that existing prejudices are baked into datasets and algorithms. This led to more questions about:

• Is there is a role for curators in defining and designing unbiased and more representative data sets to more fairly reflect society?
• Should archives collect training data, to understand underlying biases?
• Who is the author of AI created text and dialogue? Who is the legally responsible person/orgnisation?
• What opportunities are there for libraries and archives to teach people about digital safety through understanding datasets and how they are used?

Participants also questioned:

• Why do we humanise AI?
• Why do we give AI a gender?
• Is society ready for a genderless AI?
• Could the next progress in AI be a combination of human/AI? A biological advancement? Human with AI “components” - would that make us think of AIs as fallible?

With so many questions and a lack of answers, it was felt that fiction may also help us to better understand some of these issues, and Rachel Foss ended the roundtable discussion by saying that she is looking forward to reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel Klara and the Sun, about an artificial being called Klara who longs to find a human owner, which is due to be published next month by Faber.

Thanks to everyone who spoke at and participated in this AURA workshop, to make it a lively and productive event. Extra special thanks to Deirdre Sullivan for helping to run the online event smoothly. Looking ahead, the third workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Archives: What comes next? is being organised by the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the AURA project team, and is scheduled to take place on Tuesday 16 March 2021. Please do join the AURA mailing list and follow #AURA_network on social media to be part of the network's ongoing discussions.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)