Search Constraints
Search Results
-
Journal article
Writing a Big Data history of music
This article introduces the project A Big Data History of Music, which set out to unlock the bibliographical data held by research libraries in order to create new research opportunities for musicologists. The project cleaned and enhanced aspects of the British Library catalogues of printed and manuscript music, which are...Rose, Stephen ; Tuppen, Sandra ; Drosopoulou, Loukia
-
Journal article
Complicating the story of popular science: John Maynard Smith’s 'Little Penguin' on The Theory of Evolution
Popular science writing has received increasing interest, especially in its relation to professional science. I extend the current scholarly focus from the nineteenth to the twentieth century by providing a microhistory of the early popular writings of evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith (1920–2004). Linking them to the state of evolutionary...Piel, Helen
popular science, science communication, Neo-Darwinism, evolutionary theory, and John Maynard Smith
-
Journal article
Negotiating the ‘Ghanaian’ way of schooling: transnational mobility and the educational strategies of British-Ghanaian families
While scholars are increasingly interested in migrants in the Global North educating their children in their homelands, ethnographic studies of how ideas about being educated are shaped, and young people’s accounts of these transnational educational practices, remain under-researched. This paper attends to these gaps by drawing on the ethnographic cases...Abotsi, Emma
education, Ghana, children and youth, West Africa, and transnational migration
-
Journal article
Development and mining of a database of historic European paper properties
A database of historic paper properties was developed using 729 samples of European origin (1350–1990), analysed for acidity, degree or polymerisation (DP), molecular weight of cellulose, grammage, tensile strength, as well as contents of ash, aluminium, carbonyl groups, rosin, protein, lignin and fibre furnish. Using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and...Strlič, Matija ; Liu, Yun ; Lichtblau, Dirk Andreas ; De Bruin, Gerrit ; Knight, Barry …
-
Journal article
Popular History in the Black British Press: Edward Scobie’s Tropic and Flamingo, 1960-64
This article uses Edward Scobie, the Dominican-born journalist and historian, as an entry point for recovering histories of the Black British press and popular history. Examining two commercial Black magazines from the early 1960s, Tropic and Flamingo, it identifies the political utility of Black British history. Reflecting on presentist and...Oppenheim, Naomi
reparative, magazines, post-war Britain, 1960s, temporalities, Black history, and Caribbean
-
Journal article
Experiments in Crowd-funding Community Archaeology
This article reviews existing case studies in the ‘crowd-funding’ of community archaeology, as well as offering preliminary results from a small-scale experiment conducted alongside the wider crowd-sourcing efforts of the MicroPasts project (http://micropasts.org). In so-doing, it also considers the possible role of a hybrid reward- and donation-based model for micro-financing... -
Journal article
Collective Re-Excavation and Lost Media from the Last Century of British Prehistoric Studies
There are thousands of forgotten archaeological archives hidden away in repositories all over the world, lost worlds where many scholars have toiled away for years, trying to record every detail and bit of information available about rare and precious archaeological objects in an attempt to bring order and understanding to...Wexler, Jennifer ; Bevan, Andrew ; Bonacchi, Chiara ; Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Pett, Daniel …
-
Journal article
Citizen archaeologists. Online collaborative research about the human past
Archaeology has a long tradition of volunteer involvement but also faces considerable challenges in protecting and understanding a geographically widespread, rapidly dwindling and ever threatened cultural resource. This paper considers a newly launched, multi-application crowdsourcing project called MicroPasts that enables both community-led and massive online contributions to high quality research...Bevan, Andrew ; Pett, Daniel ; Bonacchi, Chiara ; Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Lombraña González, Daniel …
heritage, MicroPasts, archaeology, crowd-sourcing, and citizen science
-
Book chapter
'Columen Vitae': pharmaceutical packaging, 1750-1850
Medical products, predominantly sold by newspaper and book printers, became the most heavily advertised branded good throughout the eighteenth century. Proprietary medicines were big business and so counterfeits were rife; protecting the brand was crucial. Proprietors aimed to convince consumers of the medicine’s authenticity, its reliability and, on occasion, its...Basford, Jennifer
promotional material, branding, material culture, proprietary medicines, and eighteenth century
-
Conference paper (published)
Prospects for a Big Data History of Music
This position paper sets out the possibility of a musicology based on the analysis of musical-bibliographical metadata as Big Data. It outlines the work underway, as part of the AHRC-funded project A Big Data History of Music, to align seven major datasets of musical-bibliographical metadata. After discussing some of the...Rose, Stephen ; Tuppen, Sandra
-
Dataset
Persistent Identifiers as IRO Infrastructure: Survey Data
The survey ran from 28 May to 14 September 2020 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. It is intended to re-run the...Kotarski, Rachael ; Madden, Frances
-
Dataset
Catalogue records of photographs (1850-1950)
A set of catalogue records for photographs (created 1850-1950) that are held at the British Library. Export from the Integrated Archives and Manuscripts System of only CC0 published records. Personal or sensitive information has been removed. This dataset was created specifically for the Legacies of Catalogue Descriptions and Curatorial Voice:...British Library ; Moretto, Nicolas
datasets, metadata, catalogues, and photographs
-
Dataset
Developing identifiers workshop analysis
A collection of use cases gathered for the Developing Identifiers for Heritage Collections resource (https://tanc-ahrc.github.io/PIDResources/). It describes all the use cases for which PIDs are used and was used to inform the aspects described in the resource.Madden, Frances
-
Dataset
Locating a National Collection Our Place audience survey results
Results of an audience survey conducted by Locating a National Collection and funded by the AHRC. The research has been led by the National Trust in collaboration with the British Library and Research Bods, a market research company who have delivered results using the NT’s ‘Our Place’ online audience research...Vitale, Valeria ; Rees, Gethin ; Hunt, Alex
-
Dataset
Collective Wisdom crowdsourcing organiser and volunteer survey results
Results from two short surveys run for the Collective Wisdom project. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Collective Wisdom project captures the collective wisdom of researchers and practitioners in crowdsourcing, citizen history, citizen science and public / community participation in research with cultural heritage collections....Ridge, Mia ; Ferriter, Meghan ; Blickhan, Samantha
-
Research report
Enabling use of DOIs for data citation in longitudinal studies: A report on the DataCite UK Workshop for CLOSER
The UK’s longitudinal studies (including cohort and household panel studies) have been making their data available to researchers beyond their immediate staff for decades. Over this time, they have developed various models of data sharing and citation that have increased the value of the data collected. DataCite was created in...British Library
-
Research report
PIDs as IRO Infrastructure - Early Findings
The Persistent Identifiers as IRO Infrastructure project was launched in January 2020, funded under the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Towards a National Collection programme. Our aim is to explore persistent identifiers as a foundational infrastructure for the programme, using their power to provide a long-lasting click-able link to...Kotarski, Rachael ; Kirby, Jack ; Madden, Frances ; Mitchell, Lorna ; Padfield, Joseph …
-
Research report
Persistent Identifiers at the National Gallery
The National Gallery has conducted exploratory work related to persistent identifiers (PIDs) over the last number of years. This work has led to the development of a beta PID system based on URIs that is now transitioning to a production system. This case study provides an overview of their implementation...Madden, Frances ; Padfield, Joseph
-
Research report
Persistent Identifiers at the Natural History Museum
This report describes the use of identifiers and persistent identifiers (PIDs) at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London. The NHM is a visitor attraction and international science centre for natural history collections. It has an extensive research programme and employs approximately 300 research scientists. It is in the midst of...Madden, Frances ; Woodburn, Matt
-
Research report
Locating a National Collection interim report
Interim report for Locating a National Collection project funded by AHRC part of the Towards a National Collection programme. Locating a National Collection (LaNC) helps cultural heritage organisations to use location data — such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe — to...Vitale, Valeria ; Rees, Gethin
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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 …
-
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 …
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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... -
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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 …
-
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... -
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
-
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 …
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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