Sharing and Serendipity

Sharing and SerendipityThe bridges we build make the

difference between ‘use’ and ‘re-use’

Ben O’Steen, British Library Labs @benosteen

British Library Labs

funded by the Andrew K. Mellon foundation (2013 - …)

⇒ Mahendra Mahey and Ben O’Steen

Experimenting for the sake of the researcher:

British Library Labs - http://labs.bl.uk (embedded in the ‘Digital Scholarship’ department.)

“Create, explore and foster new and innovative ways to work with the British Library’s existing digital content.”*

(*My paraphrasing)

David Foster Wallace, on Ambition:

“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

Because doing anything results in— It’s actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is.”- As told to Leonard Lopate on WNYC on March 4, 1996.

(emphasis my own)http://blankonblank.org/interviews/david-foster-wallace-on-ambition/

The unifying theme to (pretty much) all the requests*:

* before BL Labs

The unifying theme to (pretty much) all the requests:

Give me EVERYTHING!

Why?“Can’t they just find the things they want

through the catalogue?”

1. If they knew which bits of data were necessary,

they would already know the answers.

“I am interested in

travel accounts in

Europe during the 19th Century”

2. If a conventional search interface worked, they wouldn’t be asking.

Library interfaces presuppose that the person using them:- knows the name of the thing they need,- wants a single thing at a time,- share the library’s views on characterising

information,- and most importantly, the ‘person’ using

them is an actual person, not a machine

“16 Sad Women”

2013 Competition winnershttp://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs

Pieter Francois

Data-mining

Research using a normal catalogue interface is like finding needles in a haystack.

Data-mining is like throwing a huge magnet in and seeing what sticks.

Bulk access to all data is necessary for new forms of research to emerge.

How has the depiction of faces changed in books over the 19th Century?

Or, how well does modern photographic face detection routines work on 19th

Century illustrations?

Success? Not really.

Many more female faces were found than male.

This did not mean that there are more images of women in the books than men!

19C depictions of faces

• Often drawn more symmetrically - male faces were more likely to be exaggerated.

• Depiction is typically 'clean' and posed• Fashion: beards, spectacles and hats - different

to the modern photographic training data

There was something else though...

People on their way past would occasionally pause and look over my shoulder.

Every day it dug up illustrations that surprised me and the team around me.

So… I wondered if anyone else might be surprised and intrigued by them too?http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/archive

Impact?

Hard to measure but:

- 20 million hits on average every month, over 230 million in 13 months.

- Over 150,000 tags added.- Hundreds of contributors.- Iterative crowdsourcing is ongoing.

- https://commons.wikimedia.

org/wiki/Commons:

British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/map_tag_status

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/sound-and-vision/2014/10/inspired-by-flickr-air.html

David Normalhttp://www.davidnormal.com/

Burning Man Festival

David Normal created light boxes around theBurning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images

Burning Man Festival

Gothic theme, tie-in with the Library's exhibitionTerror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination 3 October 2014 - 20 January 2015

• Fonthill AbbeyHome of William Beckford, author of Vathek

• Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death

• Whitby and its association with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula

Off the Map 2014

Off the Map 2014 Winners

•2014 winning team: Gothulus RiftUniversity of South Wales

•Created a Fonthill Abbey inspired game called Nix using Oculus Rift

•Blog: http://nixgamedevblog.blogspot.co.uk

•YouTube flythrough: http://youtu.be/8ESieZO4VHw

Off the Map 2015•Alice’s Adventures Off the Map

•Part of the British Library's celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland

•http://gamecity.org/alices-adventures-off-the-map/

British Library Labs Competitions

http://labs.bl.uk/British+Library+Labs+Competition+2015

(Unofficial descriptions of the two:“Tell us your ideas”and“Show us what you have done”)

My contact details:

ben.osteen@bl.uk@benosteen

Links:http://labs.bl.ukhttp://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com https://flickr.com/photos/britishlibraryhttps://github.com/bl-labshttp://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html \