Experimenting with British Library’s Digital Content and Data for your research (Open University)
A workshop organised by British Library Labs and the Open University as part of the British Library Labs Roadshow (2016).

The workshop will showcase some of the British Library’s digital content and data, addressing some of the challenges and issues of working with it and how interesting and exciting projects from researchers, artists, and entrepreneurs have been developed via the annual British Library Labs Competition and Awards. This will be followed by presentations about research at the Open University. Finally, the session will end with an ‘Ideas Lab’ encouraging participants to explore, experiment and think of ideas of what they might do with the British Library’s digital content and data. A panel will give feedback on the ideas and there will be a British Library goody bag for the best one!

Date and Time:
Monday 29th February 2016, 1200 - 1500

Cost:
Free

Location:
Open University Library, Milton Keynes: the Library Presentation Room

Map:
Please refer to the following map detailing how to get to the event. The Library Presentation Room is on the ground floor of the Betty Boothroyd Library.

BL Labs Roadshow (2016)

Hundreds of thousands of digital items and objects are being created and collected for researchers to use such as digitised manuscripts, sheet music, newspapers, maps, archived websites, radio, performances, TV news broadcasts, and artworks, as well as the more expected items like scanned versions of books.

This wonderful cacophony of content is having a significant effect on how institutions like the British Library support the research needs of their users. Will people discover new information when they are no longer restricted to viewing a single page from a single book at a time? How can the BL build systems that provide a coherent route across its content, regardless of whether it is a televised news report or a unique signature drawn in the margins of a map? How can we use crowd-sourced information, computer vision and machine-learning techniques to provide people with better tools to better judge and interpret the context of illustration or work? How can we exploit animations and interactive infographics to better convey the information found in our holdings?

This is the research space that British Library Labs explores and we want to encourage researchers at the Open University to work with us and share their research questions and innovative ideas around this.

Technical Requirements: We recommend that you bring a laptop to the event if you would like to access the Labs digital data (see: http://goo.gl/E8aRyQ). If you bring a mobile device such as an IPad, Galaxy Tab and Mobile Phone, you will need to install a File Explorer application in order to browse our digital content!

Programme:

1200 Registration and Lunch

1230 Introduction
Open University

1235 The Digital Research Team.
Aquiles Alencar Brayner, Digital Curator at the British Library
Aquiles will talk about this cross-disciplinary mix of curators, researchers, librarians and programmers who support the creation and innovative use of British Library's digital collections. In this talk Aquiles will highlight how they work with those operating at the intersection of academic research, cultural heritage and technology to support new ways of exploring and accessing our collections through collaborative projects.

1305 British Library Labs
Mahendra Mahey, Project Manager of British Library Labs.

The British Library Labs project supports and inspires scholars to use the British Library’s incredible digital collections in exciting and innovative ways for their research, through various activities such as competitions, awards, events and projects. Labs will highlight some of the work that they and others are doing around digital content in libraries and also talk about ways to encourage researchers to engage with the British Library.

They will present information on the annual BL Labs Competition, which closes this year on 11th April 2016. Through the Competition, Labs encourages researchers to submit their important research question or creative idea which uses the British Library’s digital content and data. Two Competition winners then work in residence at the British Library for five months and then showcase the results of their work at the annual Labs Symposium in November 2016.

Labs will also discuss the annual BL Labs Awards which recognises outstanding work already completed, that has used the British Library’s digital collections and data. This year, the Awards will commend work in four areas: Research, Artistic, Commercial and Teaching / Learning. The deadline for entering the BL Labs Awards this year is 5th September 2016, useful links below:

• Previous Ideas (http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs)
• Projects (http://labs.bl.uk/Other+Uses+of+Collections)

Labs will further present information on various projects such as the ‘Mechanical Curator’ and other interesting experiments using the British Library’s digital content and data.

Labs will be coming along with terabytes of the British Library’s digital data on the day which the team will give an overview of how to access it, highlighting some of the challenges faced when working with “messy” data.

There will be an opportunity for questions at the end of this session for the British Library Team.

1345 Ideas Lab
Labs Team

The Labs team will run through this informal activity, where delegates will have the opportunity to work in small groups (min 2 up to 6) and come up with their own ideas. The team and OU staff will be on hand to help and advise. For detailed instructions and information see the Ideas Lab Pack on your table.

1445 Pitching ideas to the panel
Open University and Labs Team

Each group will pitch their ideas to the Labs and OU panel who will give feedback on how they might be implemented ­and there’s even the chance to win a goody bag!

1500 Finish

Feedback about the event
Please complete the feedback form the event.

Speaker Biographies:

Aquiles Alencar Brayner, Digital Curator at the British Library
Aquiles joined the British Library in 2006 as curator of Latin American collections and in 2010 was promoted to the position of Digital Curator, which he has been supporting the Library to establish its role as a provider of information and electronic content amongst academics and other users. He has managed various programs and activities related to digital services and collections at the BL including digitisation projects, creation and control of metadata, training librarians and researchers in the use of digital content, and the design and development of interoperable platforms for dissemination and aggregation of data between libraries in the UK and abroad. Aquiles holds a PhD in Brazilian literature from King's College (University of London).

Mahendra Mahey, Project Manager of British Library Labs.
Previous to Labs he was at UKOLN (University of Bath) working for 4 years on the Jisc funded the UK Developer Community Supporting Innovation (DevCSI) initiative (organising several Developer Happiness” conferences (dev8d.org)) and 5 years together on a project focussing on how academic institutions could manage their research information using a common metadata standard and one supporting research in digital repositories of scholarly outputs. He was an adviser for the Jisc Regional Support Centres encouraging academics / librarians to use electronic learning resources and make effective use of e-learning technologies and techniques in their practice. He also worked as a lecturer for over 10 years in Social Sciences, Computing, Multimedia and English for Speakers of Other Languages in Further and Higher Education internationally.

Hana Lewis, Project Officer of British Library Labs
Hana’s role provides support for the everyday management of the Labs project. She also has experience of working as a Leading Library Assistant in the British Library’s reading rooms. Hana was previously a senior archaeologist at Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) and holds a BA and an MA in archaeology. She specialises in London archaeology and Anglo-Saxon studies and has produced several publications. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.