Search Constraints
Search Results
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Book
Collaborative Historical Research in the Age of Big Data
Living with Machines is the largest digital humanities project ever funded in the UK. The project brought together a team of twenty-three researchers to leverage more than twenty-years' worth of digitisation projects in order to deepen our understanding of the impact of mechanisation on nineteenth-century Britain. In contrast to many...Ahnert, Ruth ; Griffin, Emma ; Ridge, Mia ; Tolfo, Giorgia
digital humanities, British history, multidisciplinarity, digital history, and nineteenth century
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Dataset
Ground Truth transcriptions for training OCR of historical Bengali printed texts – Recognition of Early Indian Printed Documents competition - updated with improved XML coordinates
This dataset comprises 81 digitised images (TIFF files) drawn from a selection of early printed Bengali books (1713-1914) digitised through the Two Centuries of Indian Print project (https://www.bl.uk/projects/two-centuries-of-indian-print). Also contained are ground truth transcriptions (XML) for each page that can be used for training optical character recognition software on historical...British Library ; Derrick, Tom
OCR, Indian, and transcription
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Software
Peripleo
Peripleo is a prototype application for the discovery and spatial visualisation of collection data, originally an initiative of the Pelagios Network and developed early in 2022 as part of the British Library's Locating a National Collection project (LaNC). LaNC was a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection...Simon, Rainer ; Gadd, Stephen ; Rees, Gethin ; Isaksen, Leif
location, geography, map, and cultural heritage
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Conference paper (published)
Locating a National Collection through Audience Research DH2022 Long Abstract
This abstract was submitted to the DH2022 conference where I presented a long paper. It explores how geography can help to engage the public with digital cultural heritage collections. It draws on audience research that examined values and motivations in the UK alongside the use of location-based interfaces such as...Rees, Gethin ; Vitale, Valeria ; Hunt, Alex ; Horgan, John ; Strachan, Peter
location, metadata, web maps, geography, cultural heritage, and interface design
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Dataset
The Blackpool Gazette & Herald
The Blackpool Gazette & Herald (1874 - 1919) was a weekly newspaper which has been digitised by the British Library for the Living with Machines project. All but one of these datasets is currently unavailable due to a technical glitch when uploading larger files into the repository. Hopefully this will...British Library
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Dataset
Halifax Local Opinion
The Halifax Local Opinion was a weekly newspaper which has been digitised by the British Library for the Living with Machines project. Th is dataset (BLNewspapers_HalifaxLocalOpinion0003063_1892.zip) is currently unavailable due to a technical glitch when uploading larger files into the repository. Hopefully this will be resolved and the dataset will...British Library
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Presentation
Map your data with Peripleo
Slides from a tutorial in in mapping cultural heritage and humanities data and making these available on the web using Peripleo software. Delivered as part of the British Library’s internal ‘Hack and Yack’ training programme on 23 Feb 2023, this document was provided as a handout. Peripleo is a prototype...Simon, Rainer
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Learning object
Peripleo Linked Pasts tutorial
This is a tutorial in mapping cultural heritage and humanities data and making these available on the web using Peripleo software. Delivered as part of the Linked Pasts symposium on 23 Nov 2022, this document was provided as a handout. Peripleo is a prototype application for the discovery and spatial...Rees, Gethin ; Simon, Rainer ; Gadd, Stephen
location, cultural heritage, map, and geography
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Learning object
Locolligo British Library tutorial
This explanation of how to transform and wrangle geographical cultural heritage and humanities data using Locolligo software. Delivered as part of the British Library’s internal ‘Hack and Yack’ training programme on 19 Jan 2023, this document was provided as a handout. Locolligo is a single-page, browser-based JavaScript application to facilitate...Gadd, Stephen
location, geography, map, and cultural heritage
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Conference paper (published)
The BigScience ROOTS Corpus: A 1.6TB Composite Multilingual Dataset
As language models grow ever larger, the need for large-scale high-quality text datasets has never been more pressing, especially in multilingual settings. The BigScience workshop, a 1-year international and multidisciplinary initiative, was formed with the goal of researching and training large language models as a values-driven undertaking, putting issues of...Laurençon, Hugo ; Saulnier, Lucile ; Wang, Thomas ; Akiki, Christopher ; Villanova del Moral, Albert …
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Research report
Locating a National Collection (LaNC) Final Report
Locating a National Collection helps cultural heritage organisations to use geographical information — such as where objects were made and used or the locations they depict and describe — to connect collections and engage the public. Through workshops, audience research and software development the project has developed a set of...Rees, Gethin ; Gadd, Stephen ; Horgan, John ; Hunt, Alex ; Isaksen, Leif …
location, geographical information, collections, cultural heritage organisations, research data, and digital records
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Journal article
AI training resources for GLAM: a snapshot
We take a snapshot of current resources available for teaching and learning AI with a focus on the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) community. The review was carried out in 2021 and 2022. The review provides an overview of material we identified as being relevant, offers a description of... -
Conference paper (published)
Entities, Dates, and Languages: Zero-Shot on Historical Texts with T0
In this work, we explore whether the recently demonstrated zero-shot abilities of the T0 model extend to Named Entity Recognition for out-of-distribution languages and time periods. Using a historical newspaper corpus in 3 languages as test-bed, we use prompts to extract possible named entities. Our results show that a naive...De Toni, Francesco ; Akiki, Christopher ; De La Rosa, Javier ; Fourrier, Clémentine ; Manjavacas, Enrique …
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Video
Persistent Identifiers in Cultural Heritage Collections
Persistent Identifiers help make collections available for the long term so they can be discovered, researched and cited. A range of experts describe how PIDs can help manage, research and digitise collections.British Library
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Journal article
Effects of soothing images and soothing sounds on mood and well‐being
Objectives Mental health problems are increasing at an alarming rate, calling for the need for more cost-effective and easily accessible interventions. Visual images and sounds depicting nature have been found to have positive effects on individuals' mood and well-being; however, the combined effects of images and sounds have been scarcely...Witten, Emily ; Ryynanen, Jasmiina ; Wisdom, Stella ; Tipp, Cheryl ; Chan, Stella W. Y.
depression, Project Soothe, mood, sounds, well-being, images, nature, and anxiety
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Website
Locating a National Collection project website
Project website for the Locating a National Collection (LaNC) project that houses instances of LaNC’s Peripleo maps interface alongside descriptive text (https://github.com/britishlibrary/locating-a-national-collection). The website was built using Joe Padfield’s simple-site, many thanks to him (https://github.com/jpadfield/simple-site). LaNC was a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection Programme.Gadd, Stephen ; Simon, Rainer ; Rees, Gethin ; Isaksen, Leif
location, geography, map, and cultural heritage
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Research report
Intersectional Taxonomies: Current and Future Practice (V.1)
This research project has been divided into two phases of completion, the first resulting in V.1 of a Research deck to be shared on Monday, 11 July, and the second, with a written Project report, including Literature review and Bibliography, informing V.2 of the deck to be delivered Monday, the...Kelleher, Ashley
GLAM, shared repository service, taxonomies, and cultural heritage
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Research report
Intersectional Taxonomies: Current to Future Use (V.2)
The methodology below has enabled the author to examine the applied structures of metadata currently employed throughout the Repository Shared layer, as well as with in each partner’s live environment, as well as gain a look and feel of the current UX experience of the Research Repository. 1. Page visits...Kelleher, Ashley
shared repository service, taxonomies, cultural heritage, and GLAM
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Journal article
Discovering the local in national cultural heritage collections. How web maps can help the UK public engage with their ‘own places’
Identity is a critical influence on the public’s engagement with cultural heritage. This article emphasises the role of geographical scale in this relationship examining how the presentation of local heritage can foster meaningful engagement with collections. The geographical information embedded in digital collections – such as where objects were made... -
Dataset
StopsGB: Structured Timeline of Passenger Stations in Great Britain
Michael Quick's book _Railway Passenger Stations in Great Britain: a Chronology_ offers a uniquely rich and detailed account of Britain's changing railway infrastructure. Its listing of over 12,000 stations allows us to reconstruct the coming of rail at both micro- and macro-scales. However, being published originally as a book (and... -
Book
Caribbean Publishing: A Selective Bibliography of British Library Holdings, 1800-1974
This bibliography includes British Library holdings of books that were published in Barbados, British Guiana, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, between 1800 and their respective independences: 1966, 1970, 1974, 1962 and 1962. A selective bibliography, there were some important exclusions, crucially, anything that was published by a ‘government printing...Oppenheim, Naomi
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Report
Locating a National Collection/Research Bods qualitative findings summary
The National Trust and The British Library, along with several cultural heritage partners, commissioned an audience research project to inform the development of an online history and heritage platform to provide broader access to the wealth of artefacts and resources from across the entire network of information providers. This report...Horgan, John
Audience Research, Qualitative, Location, Cultural Heritage, and Geography
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Report
Locating a National Collection/Research Bods quantitative findings summary
The National Trust and The British Library, along with several cultural heritage partners, commissioned an audience research project to inform the development of an online history and heritage platform to provide broader access to the wealth of artefacts and resources from across the entire network of information providers. This slide...Strachan, Peter
Quantitative, Audience Research, Geography, Location, and Cultural Heritage
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Spreadsheets as User Interfaces
Spreadsheets are ubiquitous, familiar, often overlooked, and embody vast financial and human investment, not least in their user interface. This paper shows how spreadsheets can be used as an integral part of interactive processes, for activities from simple data entry, to more complex grouping and linking of datasets, both as...Dix, Alan ; Cowgill, Rachel ; Bashford, Christina ; McVeigh, Simon ; Ridgewell, Rupert
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Presentation
Locating a national collection through audience research
Locating a National Collection (LaNC) aims to help cultural heritage organisations to use location data — such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe — to connect collections and engage audiences. Location-based interfaces such as web maps offer opportunities to open up collections...Rees, Gethin
Interface design, Geography, Location, Web maps, Cultural Heritage, and Metadata
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Presentation
Locating a National Collection
Locating a National Collection (LaNC) aims to help cultural heritage organisations to use location data — such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe — to connect collections and engage audiences. Location-based interfaces such as web maps offer opportunities to open up collections...Rees, Gethin ; Vitale, Valeria
Interface design, Geography, Location, Web maps, Cultural Heritage, and Metadata
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Developing Identifiers for Heritage Collections
'Developing Identifiers for Heritage Collections ' is a tool aimed at heritage professionals to support decision making for persistent identifier (PID) use. The project’s 2020 survey found the value of PIDs, for example in creating trustworthy links, was understood but needs to be more clearly addressed directly to decision makers...Madden, Frances
persistent identifiers, Towards a National Collection, and PIDs
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Dataset
Persistent Identifiers as IRO Infrastructure: Survey 2 Data
The survey ran from 4 October to 8 November 2021 and was open to everyone working in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums internationally but the survey had a clear UK focus. Some responses have been removed or recoded to protect the identity of respondents.Kotarski, Rachael ; Madden, Frances
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Presentation
Developing Identifiers Resource and Q&A
A presentation as part of 'Developing Identifiers for Heritage Collections' webinar held on 21st April 2021.Madden, Frances
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Presentation
Developing Identifiers for Heritage Collections: Introduction and Case Studies
A presentation as part of 'Developing Identifiers for Heritage Collections' webinar held on 21st April 2021. Photo Credit: Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society © ArchivePlus/Max Bamber 2016Madden, Frances
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Research report
Academic Books and their Future. A Report to the AHRC and the British Library
The aim in this report is to provide an account of perspectives from three key stakeholder groups—publishers, libraries, and intermediaries in the supply chain for academic books—and to highlight some key issues that arise from those different perspectives. A central set of perspectives is of course missing here, that of...Jubb, Michael
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Research report
The Academic Book of the Future Project Report. A Report to the AHRC and the British Library
We begin this report with an examination of the policy context within which academics write, produce and read academic books, and the effect these have upon research and teaching. We then move to a detailed analysis of what we actually mean by an academic book, and describe many of the...Deegan, Marilyn
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Research report
Heritage and Data: Challenges and Opportunities for the Heritage Sector. Report of the Heritage Data Research Workshop held Friday 23 June 2017 at the British Library, London
The event held at the British Library on the 23rd June 2017 was envisaged as an initial scoping and investigative research workshop, bringing together key representatives from the UK heritage industry and academic community from humanities and social and computing science to discuss challenges and opportunities that data presents to...Harrison, Rodney ; Morel, Hana ; Maricevic, Maja ; Penrose, Sefryn
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Moving image
The Academic Book of the Future Project Film
This short film explains what The Academic Book of the Future Project was about and what it achieved. The Academic Book of the Future Project was funded by the AHRC in partnership with the British Library. See the Project website, https://academicbookfuture.org/ for more details.Academic Book of the Future Project
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Conference paper (published)
Crowd- and Community-Fuelled Archaeology. Early Results from the MicroPasts Project
The MicroPasts project is a novel experiment in the use of crowd-based methodologies to enable participatory archaeological research. Building on a long tradition of offline community archaeology in the UK, this initiative aims to integrate crowd-sourcing, crowd-funding and forum-based discussion to encourage groups of academics and volunteers to collaborate on...Bonacchi, Chiara ; Bevan, Andrew ; Pett, Daniel ; Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi
Public Archaeology, crowd-funding, crowd-sourcing, and online communities
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Digital Sudan: Digitizing Cultural Heritage for the Democratization of Knowledge
For many decades, heritage in Sudan has been a battleground between the diverse political, religious and ethnic forces. This is affecting the way in which the educational and curriculum development processes are organized and how the acquisitions of public libraries, including the National Library, are selected. For many years, books...Satti, Nureldin
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Academic Authorship and Arab Knowledge Production
This talk is inspired by the book that I recently co-authored with Rigas Arvanitis Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise. (2016). I will show a paradox: Arab knowledge production has tremendously increased but often without being translated into public awareness and policy. What does mean in terms...Hanafi, Sari
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Tombouctou Manuscripts Project
In this presentation I shall introduce the work of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project. It began as an attempt to understand the tradition of learning in Timbuktu as represented in the large number of manuscript books kept in the town. However, it has expanded into a larger consideration of various issues...Jeppie, Shamil
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Conference paper (unpublished)
The Southpaw and The Global Knowledge Order
This paper considers the special challenges of creating and accessing knowledge material relating to the global South, especially from locations in the South. The imbalance between North and South in the creation of knowledge resources is linked to their unequal access to extant resources, but the link is not always...Chaudhuri, Sukanta
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Academic Publishing in Africa
Provision of education at all levels has always been one of the, if not the, most important expectation that Africans demand of their governments. In the twenty-first century even a bachelor’s degree is no longer good enough for the few available government jobs or for those in the private sector....Bgoya, Walter
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Book chapter
‘A trifling matter’? State branding on stone bottles, 1812-1834
Nineteenth-century stone bottles used for liquid blacking and alcohol are among the most frequently recovered nineteenth-century objects. Such items often display proprietary marks that provide tantalizing hints about the former owners or use of the bottle and have received considerable attention from collectors, archaeologists and curators. This chapter, based upon...Basford, Jennifer
stone bottle, statehood, Hungate, branding, archaeology, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, York, and Excise
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Magazine article
MicroPasts: An Innovative Place for Progressing Research
Archaeology has always attracted enthusiastic volunteers, who have participated in excavations, surveys, site recording or artefact handling, as well as museum-related tasks such as engaging with visitors or helping with curatorial duties. However, most data have been produced by specialists. More often than not the knowledge remains in the academic...Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Bevan, Andrew ; Pett, Daniel ; Bonacchi, Chiara ; Wilkin, Neil …
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Journal article
Crowd-sourcing the British Bronze Age: Initial Experiences and Results from the MicroPasts Project
Neal Ascherson (2002) has argued that some nations are ‘tidy with their past’, while others leave theirs ‘unsorted’ for ‘scavengers [to] wander, pulling up interesting fragments’ (Ibid., vii). Ascherson reassures us that the latter attitude is nothing to be ashamed of, given that the lack of a ‘commanding ‘story’ which...Wilkin, Neil ; Bevan, Andrew ; Bonacchi, Chiara ; Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Pett, Daniel …
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Journal article
Library catalogue records as a research resource : introducing 'A Big Data History of Music'
Librarians and archivists are increasingly collecting and working with large quantities of digital data. In science, business, and now the humanities, the production and analysis of vast amounts of data (so-called ‘big data research’) have become fundamental activities. This article introduces the project A Big Data History of Music, a...Tuppen, Sandra ; Rose, Stephen ; Drosopoulou, Loukia
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Research report
Persistent Identifiers at the British Library
This case study provides an overview of persistent identifiers (PIDs) at the British Library, including both those in use and those planned for the future. We hope that this case study will help other heritage organisations to see what the path to use PIDs looks like, and understand what decisions...Madden, Frances ; Kotarski, Rachael
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Other
Research reflections: a transmedia residency at the British Library
As a Digital Curator in the British Library’s Digital Scholarship department it is my role to encourage and support innovative, creative use and reinterpretation of the Library’s vast collections. Furthermore, my specific areas of personal research interest are how virtual and augmented reality technology, videogames and interactive fiction can be...Wisdom, Stella
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Interactive resource
Identifiers in Heritage Collections - how embedded are they?
Persistent Identifiers as IRO Infrastructure is an AHRC funded project as part of the Towards a National Collection programme. In this second webinar for the project, the project team presented the initial results of a survey on the use of persistent identifiers in Heritage Organisations followed by a panel discussion...Kotarski, Rachael ; Page, Roderic
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Interactive resource
Towards a National Collection: Persistent Identifiers as IRO Infrastructure – Project Launch Webinar
The project will bring together best practices in the use of PIDs in the UK heritage sector, with a focus on those that are Independent Research Organisations. Building on existing work and projects, we will share expertise and provide recommendations on the approach to PIDs for colleagues across the UK...Kotarski, Rachael ; Padfield, Joseph ; Stack, John ; Madden, Frances
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Conference paper (unpublished)
‘If the package is right, the pills are right’: Proprietary medicines, branding, and advertising, 1650-1850
Medical products, predominantly sold by newspaper and book printers, became the most heavily advertised branded good throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This fact, combined with the ever-increasing availability of digitised contemporary newspapers, has generated important work upon their advertisement and distribution. These studies have considerably enriched our understanding of...Basford, Jennifer
branding, material culture, advertising, proprietary medicine, and packaging
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Research report
Persistent Identifiers at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
This case study provides an overview of the use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). RBGE delivers plant science, conservation and education programmes that are underpinned by the world-class RBGE Collections, comprising a Living Collection, a Herbarium collection and Library and Archive collections. Within the...Madden, Frances ; Mitchell, Lorna