Search Constraints
Search Results
-
Dataset
Digitised Books. c. 1510 - c. 1900. JSONL (OCR derived text + metadata)
The dataset comprises metadata and OCR generated text from 49,455 digitised books published between c. 1510 - c. 1900. The books cover a wide range of subject areas including philosophy, history, poetry and literature. The dataset is in JSON Lines (JSONL) text format.British Library Labs ; British Library
OCR and monographs
-
-
Research report
Publisher Submission Portal User Survey Report – December 2021
The Publisher Submission Portal is a tool that can be used to deposit born digital publications to the British Library, and other legal deposit libraries, to fufil obligations under legal deposit law. The Portal is designed for use by small publishers, defined as producing 50 or fewer publications per year....Hazell, Lottie
-
Journal article
Archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data: Challenges and opportunities with curating the UK web archive
In this contribution, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges arising from memory institutions' need to redefine their archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data. We will reflect on this topic by critically examining the case study of the UK Web Archive, which is made up...Bingham, Nicola Jayne ; Byrne, Helena
-
Report
Archiving Social Media Workshop Two (June 2019)
The workshop was organised by the British Library Web Archiving Team with support from Maja Maricevic, Head of Higher Education at the British Library on Monday 10th June 2019. The participants at the workshop were a mix of academic researchers, postgraduate research students and information professionals from the British Library,...UK Web Archive
-
Research report
UK Retail Industry: Scoping Document
This document aims to establish the scope of a thematic website collection initiated as part of the UK Legal Libraries Non-Print Legal Deposit collection building. The proposed collection has been given the working title ““The UK retail industry: changes on the high street””. The objective is to preserve those web...Mattos, Lola
-
Research report
UK Company Websites: Scoping Document
This document aims to establish the scope of a website collection initiated as part of the UK Legal Deposit Libraries Non-Print Legal Deposit collection building activity. The collection has been given the working title “UK Company Websites”. It aims to establish a rationale for collecting websites of UK companies of...Corsini, Tony
-
Report
Archiving Social Media Workshop One (July 2018)
The workshop was organised by the British Library Web Archiving Team with support from Maja Maricevic, Head of Higher Education at the British Library on Monday 16th July, 2019. The participants at the workshop were a mix of academic researchers and information professionals from the British Library, The National Archives...UK Web Archive
-
Technical report
Supporting documents for selected '14-18 NOW' project websites in the UK Web Archive
This series of PDFs was created by Anisa Hawes, independent researcher and archivist, to accompany a collection of archived websites produced for the '14-18 NOW' project, by the Imperial War Museum between 2018 and 2019. The PDFs provide metadata and contextual information to support navigation of the archived websites, which...Hawes, Anisa
-
Journal article
Dunhuang scrolls: Innovative storage solutions at the British Library
The British Library’s Stein collection contains about 14,000 scrolls, fragments and booklets in Chinese from a cave in the Buddhist Mogao Caves complex near Dunhuang in north-west China. This article describes storage and access solutions for the collection in the context of a busy research library and the currently ongoing...Kralka, Paulina ; Muzart, Marya
conservation, storage, paper, Central Asia, Dunhuang, and scroll
-
Journal article
Buddhism and trade: interpreting the distribution of rock-cut monasteries in the Western Ghats mountains, India using least-cost paths
Trade is frequently cited as the primary influence on the florescence of rock-cut Buddhist monasteries in the Western Ghats mountains, India between 200 BCE and 400 CE. Yet the monasteries have been foci of art-historical scholarship without detailed investigation of archaeology and geography. The relationship between monasteries, trade routes, ports...Rees, Gethin
trade, rock-cut monasteries, early historic, Deccan, Buddhism, and Western Ghats
-
Policy report
British Library Persistent Identifier Policy
The purpose of this policy is to outline the approach to the use of identifiers and persistent identifiers (PIDs) in internal and external facing British Library systems, to define a consistent set of requirements for PIDs to use when managing and developing services and to articulate the responsibilities in applying...British Library
-
Journal article
'I Renounced my Children as Aforesaid': A Consensual Divorce of 369
This article offers the edition of a divorce settlement of 369 housed in the British Library. The papyrus is one of the few fourth-century deeds of divorce. In addition to the standard clauses found in such settlements, provisions for the care of the minor children of the ex-couple are also...Micucci, Federica
-
Dataset
UK Doctoral Thesis Metadata from EThOS
This dataset has been superseded by a more recent version: https://doi.org/10.23636/ybpt-nh33 If you require access to an earlier version, please email openaccess@bl.uk, including the dataset title, date, and DOI in your request. The data in this collection comprises the bibliographic metadata for all UK doctoral theses listed in EThOS, the...British Library ; Rosie, Heather
higher education, ethos, dissertations, thesis, research, PhD, doctoral, student, UK, and theses
-
Dataset
UK Doctoral Thesis Metadata from EThOS
This dataset has been superseded by a more recent version: https://doi.org/10.23636/j278-4b96 If you require access to an earlier version, please email openaccess@bl.uk, including the dataset title, date, and DOI in your request. The data in this collection comprises the bibliographic metadata for all UK doctoral theses listed in EThOS, the...British Library ; Rosie, Heather
higher education, student, EThOS, research, doctoral, thesis, PhD, UK, dissertations, and theses
-
Book chapter
Tibet
Rinpoche, Lama Chime Radha
-
Research report
UK Web Archive Annual Report April 2020 - March 2021
The UK Web Archive is a shared resource and collaborative activity of the six UK legal deposit libraries. Since April 2013 it has been a cornerstone of our collecting under legal deposit. This report covers an exceptional year, which has highlighted the strengths, resilience and adaptability of staff across the...UK Web Archive
-
Conference paper (published)
Station to Station: Linking and Enriching Historical British Railway Data
The transformative impact of the railway on nineteenth-century British society has been widely recognized, but understanding that process at scale remains challenging because the Victorian rail network was both vast and in a state of constant flux. Michael Quick’s reference work Railway Passenger Stations in Great Britain: a Chronology offers...Coll Ardanuy, Mariona ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Lawrence, Jon ; McDonough, Katherine ; Nanni, Federico …
-
Book
US Fine Presses Established after 1945: A Guide to the British Library’s Holdings
This project grew out of a conversation in late 2019 with Phil Hatfield, then Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, who had recently pledged financial support towards the cataloguing of a backlog of US fine press publications that had been acquired by our curatorial...Petrovic, Jean
-
Research report
New Media Writing Prize (NMWP) Collection Scoping Document
This document aims to establish the scope of a thematic website collection initiated as part of the CDAS Emerging Formats work. This collection has been given the working title “New Media Writing Prize Collection”. The New Media Writing Prize (NMWP) was established in the UK in 2010 by Bournemouth University,...Rossi, Giulia Carla
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Impact cannot be measured, and other sad half-truths about impact measurement
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. In this talk, I look at bringing algorithmic fairness to impact measurement, from web-scale attention tracking to computer-assisted data story-telling. Drawing on my experience with altmetrics, I argue that many proxies for impact correlate not...Boruta, Luc
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Increasing engagement through Towards a National Collection
At the centre of the £18.9m research development programme Towards a National Collection is the aim to increase engagement with the cultural heritage collections of the UK. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the programme is working to link collections and encourage cross-searching of multiple collection types, to...Bailey, Rebecca
-
Research report
Data Study Group Final Report: The National Archives, UK: Discovering Topics and Trends in the UK Government Web Archive
The challenge we address in this report is to make steps towards improving search and discovery of resources within this vast archive for future archive users, and how the UKGWA collection could begin to be unlocked for research and experimentation by approaching it as data (i.e. as a dataset at...Beavan, David ; Nanni, Federico
-
Dataset
Ordnance Survey Old / First series England and Wales 1:63360 (georeferenced sheet images)
Map sheet images for the Ordnance Survey Old Series / First Series England and Wales 1:63360, georeferenced and cropped at the neatlike (can be viewed together as a seamless composite). Geotiff format. The original (ungeoreferenced) sheet images can be found at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ordnance_Survey_Old/First_series_England_and_Wales_1:63360_(full_sheets). The sheets were georeferenced by relating the sheet...Vane, Olivia
England, First Series, Old Series, maps, Ordnance Survey, and Wales
-
Dataset
May's British and Irish Press Guide and Advertiser's Handbook & Dictionary etc. (1871-1880)
Newspaper directories produced and published annually in contemporary 19th Britain by advertising agent Frederick May and successors, containing information on newspapers, magazines and periodicals and arranged in alphabetical and sometimes tabular order. Information for each title included price, publisher, office, political and religious leaning.Frederick May & Son ; British Library
-
Dataset
The Newspaper Press Directory (1846-1880)
Newspaper directories produced and published annually in contemporary 19th Britain by advertising agent Charles Mitchell. Newspapers listed primarily listed in alphabetical order of the town the newspaper where the title was published. Information for each title included: features connected with the district such as population and trade; principal towns in...C. Mitchell and Co. ; British Library
-
Journal article
Neural Language Models for Nineteenth-Century English
We present four types of neural language models trained on a large historical dataset of books in English, published between 1760-1900 and comprised of ~5.1 billion tokens. The language model architectures include static (word2vec and fastText) and contextualized models (BERT and Flair). For each architecture, we trained a model instance...Hosseini, Kasra ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Colavizza, Giovanni ; Coll Ardanuy, Mariona
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Users understand OpenGLAM. Do GLAMs?
For more than a decade, a dedicated bunch of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums [GLAM] around the world have been advocating for opening up cultural heritage collections while pushing for openness in their own institutions. Today, more than 1,200 GLAMs worldwide feature open access to their digitised assets – making...Sanderhoff, Merete
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Question and answer session 2 : Measuring and evaluating impact beyond journal articles
Recording of the Question and Answer discussion from Session 2: Measuring and evaluating impact beyond journal articles.Boruta, Luc ; Derrick, Gemma ; Boddington, Anne ; Adams, Helen
-
Presentation
Question and answer session 1 : Increasing Engagement with Cultural Heritage Collections
Recording of the Question and Answer discussion from Session 1: Increasing engagement with cultural heritage collections.Vézina, Brigitte ; Schaik, Sam van ; Sanderhoff, Merete ; Bailey, Rebecca
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
The Ethics of Open Access in the Endangered Archives Programme
The Endangered Archives Programme (also known as EAP) gives funding to people running projects to digitise and preserve archival materials at risk of destruction. These can date from any time before the middle of the twentieth century, and from most parts of the world except Europe and North America. The...Schaik, Sam van
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Best of both: combining arts and science to measure the benefits of online culture for mental health in young people
An inter-disciplinary project undertaken by museum and psychiatry staff at the University of Oxford in 2020 set out to find out if online cultural content could be effective against common mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. The O-ACE (Online Active Community Engagement) project used traditional arts engagement research...Adams, Helen
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Assessing the broader value of research culture: The hidden REF experience
The hidden REF was an experiment to counteract existing evaluation methods. UK REF Impact Case Studies have a narrative linearity which fails to appreciate the amazing plethora of interactions, individuals and different types of output that are part of our research culture. The hidden REF exercise aims to celebrate the...Derrick, Gemma
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
What does the future hold for "open" and cultural heritage institutions?
GLAMs’ [Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums] public interest mission is squarely aligned with the open access ethos. Indeed, making their collections as openly accessible, shareable, and reusable as possible is the best way for GLAMs to achieve their mission as they digitize and offer their collections online. But only a...Vézina, Brigitte
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Making a Difference and 'Partnering for Impact'
This presentation will reflect on impact as defined in the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) and that forms a key element of the current dual funding structure of research for Higher Education Institutions. Although impact in its broadest sense extends beyond research, it is most prominently highlighted in the REF as...Boddington, Anne
-
Dataset
Dataset for Toponym Resolution in Nineteenth-Century English Newspapers
We present a new dataset for the task of toponym resolution in digitised historical newspapers in English. It consists of 343 annotated articles from newspapers based in four different locations in England (Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, Poole and Dorchester), published between 1780 and 1870. The articles have been manually annotated with mentions...Coll Ardanuy, Mariona ; Beavan, David ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Hosseini, Kasra ; Lawrence, Jon …
nineteenth-century English, geographic information retrieval, newspapers, toponym resolution, and dataset
-
Conference paper (published)
When Time Makes Sense: A Historically-Aware Approach to Targeted Sense Disambiguation
As languages evolve historically, making computational approaches sensitive to time can improve performance on specific tasks. In this work, we assess whether applying historical language models and time-aware methods help with determining the correct sense of polysemous words. We outline the task of time-sensitive Targeted Sense Disambiguation (TSD), which aims...Beelen, Kaspar ; Nanni, Federico ; Coll Ardanuy, Mariona ; Hosseini, Kasra ; Tolfo, Giorgia …
-
Research report
Living with Machines Delivery Plan version 1, 2019
Living with Machines is a five-year collaborative project. It aims to generate new perspectives on the effects of the mechanisation of labour on the lives of ordinary people in Britain during the 'long nineteenth century' (c.1780-1918), by developing computational and historical techniques and research questions for working with historical sources....Ahnert, Ruth ; Beavan, David ; Colavizza, Giovanni ; Farquhar, Adam ; Griffin, Emma …
-
Dataset
Dataset for Toponym Resolution in Nineteenth-Century English Newspapers
We present a new dataset (version 2) for the task of toponym resolution in digitised historical newspapers in English. It consists of 455 annotated articles from newspapers based in four different locations in England (Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, Poole and Dorchester), published between 1780 and 1870. The articles have been manually annotated...Coll Ardanuy, Mariona ; Beavan, David ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Hosseini, Kasra ; Lawrence, Jon …
nineteenth-century English, dataset, newspapers, toponym resolution, and geographic information retrieval
-
Journal article
MapReader: A Computer Vision Pipeline for the Semantic Exploration of Maps at Scale
We present MapReader, a free, open-source software library written in Python for analyzing large map collections (scanned or born-digital). This library transforms the way historians can use maps by turning extensive, homogeneous map sets into searchable primary sources. MapReader allows users with little or no computer vision expertise to i)...Hosseini, Kasra ; Wilson, Daniel C.S. ; Beelen, Kaspar ; McDonough, Katherine
-
Journal article
Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research
Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color....Hosseini, Kasra ; McDonough, Katherine ; van Strien, Daniel ; Vane, Olivia ; Wilson, Daniel C.S.
-
Book
A chronological check-list of works held in the British Library in or about the Eastern Algonquian languages, 1643-1851
Covers the British Library's early eastern Algonquian language books.Edwards, Adrian S.
-
Book
A chronological checklist of works held at the British Library in or about the Northern Iroquoian Languages, 1545-1900
Covers the British Library's antiquarian materials in or about Northern Iroquoian languages.Edwards, Adrian S.
-
Research report
Quality Assurance in the New Media Writing Prize Collection
The UK Web Archive is an online repository for UK based websites. Managed by the six UK Legal Deposit Libraries—the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, Cambridge University Libraries, and the Trinity College, Dublin—the UK Web Archive's chief...Pyke, Tegan
Emerging Formats, digital preservation, British Library PhD placement, web archiving, digital storytelling, and New Media Writing Prize
-
Dataset
EAP696 Catalogue Metadata
This Excel spreadsheet contains the metadata that describes the archival collection digitised in Bulgaria by the EAP696 "Minority press in Ottoman Turkish in Bulgaria" project team. The metadata was originally created by the EAP696 project team that digitised the archive in 2014. The project team was led by Mr Stoyan...EAP696 Project Team
-
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
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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... -
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
Dataset
Mapping Irish Football
The Mapping Irish Football project called on the crowd to share any newspaper references they may have come across of women and any code of football prior to and including 1973. It is hoped that this project will start a conversation amongst researchers interested in Irish sports to do more...Byrne, Helena ; Bolton, Steve ; Carrier, John ; Farrell, Gerald ; Faller, Helge …
women's football, newspaper data, crowdsourcing, and Irish football history
-
Journal article
The Papers of Edward Scott, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum 1888-1904
Edward Scott (1840-1918) was a member of the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum for just over forty years, 1863-1904. From 1888 until his retirement he was Keeper of Manuscripts and yet he is not as well remembered as his predecessors or successors. In 2014 the British Library acquired a small...Wright, C.J.
-
Journal article
From popular to rare: Acquisition and preservation policies at the British Museum Library in Panizzi’s time
Large quantities of Italian early modern books were dispersed on a vast scale mainly from the 1760s onwards as a consequence of the decline of the local aristocracy, the French Revolution and the suppressions of religious libraries. Increasing interest in the Italian Renaissance and its historical importance strongly influenced the...Carnelos, Laura
-
Journal article
Edward Spencer Dodgson, the Basque language, and the British Museum Library
Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922) studied Classics at Oxford University, but there is no evidence that he sat his Finals. A visit to the Basque Country in 1886 began a life-long, passionate devotion to the Basque language and bibliography. He published new editions of important early texts and a series of...West, Geoffrey
-
Journal article
Hans Sloane, Samuel Pepys, and the Evidence of a Lost Pepys Library Catalogue
This article examines the relationship between Hans Sloane (1660–1753) and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), two celebrated book collectors of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Pepys's and Sloane's connection is traced back to the mid 1680s and to their attendance at the Royal Society. A mysterious leaf in Sloane's papers...Loveman, Kate
-
Journal article
James McNeill Whistler to Richard D’Oyly Carte: A Letter Comes to Light at the British Library
Recently catalogued papers of the Doyly Carte family held at the British Library have brought to light a ‘lost’ letter from the American artist James McNeill Whistler to theatrical impresario and hotelier Richard D’Oyly Carte. The letter refers to Whistler’s decoration scheme for Carte’s home at No. 4 Adelphi Terrace...Beckett, Chris
-
Journal article
Consul Joseph Smith’s Gold-Tooled Leather Bookbindings
To some researchers Consul Joseph Smith's (1682-1770) favoured binding style would comprise plain white/cream parchment covers and coloured spine pieces. There are many examples in the library of George III. This tells only part of the whole story, however, as more elaborate styles exist. As a bibliophile Smith would at...Marks, P. J. M.
-
Journal article
The Formation, development and curation of the Tapling Collection at the British Museum Library in the Nineteenth Century
In 1891 Thomas Keay Tapling bequeathed his near complete, worldwide collection of stamps and postal stationery to the British Museum Library. To celebrate the 130th anniversary of this event which created the British Library's Philatelic Collections, this article provides an overview of the Tapling Collection's formation, development and early curation...Morel, Richard Scott
-
Journal article
The Spiral-Locked Letters of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots
This article presents evidence about the use of the ‘spiral lock’, a highly secure letterlocking mechanism used by Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and other letter-writers in early modern Europe, to secure their correspondence shut. After explaining the concept of letterlocking, a centuries-old communication security technique, we demonstrate how...Dambrogio, Jana ; Smith, Daniel Starza ; Pellecchia, Jennifer ; Wiggins, Alison ; Clarke, Andrea …
-
Journal article
The Alice N. Hays Notebook: A Tour of Early Twentieth-Century Library Methods in the UK and Europe
In the summer of 1909, Stanford librarian Alice Newman Hays embarked on a journey to visit libraries across England and Europe, compiling a record of cataloguing practices to share with her colleagues back in California. Among the stops on Alice's journey were prestigious institutions like the Bodleian Library and British...Jordan, Jessica Camille
-
Journal article
A Transcription and Translation of Sloane MS. 2131, Robert Ashley’s (1561-1641) Vita: with Additional Biographical Details
British Library Sloane MS. 2131, Vita, is an autobiography written in Latin by Robert Ashley (1565-1641), bibliophile, lawyer, and translator. Ashley bequeathed his collection of approximately 5000 books to establish a library at Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. This is the first full transcription and translation...Kelser, Astrid ; Nelson, Jennifer K. ; Satterley, Renae
-
Journal article
A Survey of the Art Works Connected to Adam Gumpelzhaimer with Revelations about his _Compendium musicae_
This study contains the first detailed survey of the art works connected to the influential Augsburg _Kantor_, composer, teacher and music theorist Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625) and demonstrates that they are much more plentiful and widespread than previously realized. For instance, this survey examines nineteen portraits of Gumpelzhaimer whereas only four...Charteris, Richard
-
Research report
British Library Research Report 2018-19
Welcome to our third annual Research Report, covering the academic year October 2018 to September 2019. Research is central to the work of the British Library, permeating what we do as an organisation and shaping what we are able to offer to all our users, collaborators and audiences. Reflecting on...British Library
-
Blog post
Clouds: How Luke Howard linked Weather Lore and Natural Philosophy
William Wordsworth’s (1770-1850) ‘lonely as a cloud’ poem was conceived in April 1802 on a spring day walk in the Lake District. A few months later, in December 1802, a pharmacist and amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard (1772-1864) delivered a paper in London, on the dynamics of cloud formations. The two...Déri, Andrea
-
Blog post
Diarists and diaries
‘But one shower of rain all this month.’ - entered John Evelyn in his diary on 29th April 1681. What would you write about April 2020 in your diary? John Evelyn (1620–1706) is one of the best-known English diarists. He is known as a diarist but he was also a...Déri, Andrea
science, modern history, curiosity, writing, and environmental science
-
Blog post
The Botish Library: developing a poetry printing machine with Python
In June 2020 the Office for Students announced a campaign to fill 2,500 new places on artificial intelligence and data science conversion courses in universities across the UK. While I’m not planning to retrain in cyber, I was lucky enough to be in the cohort for the trial run of...Rossi, Giulia Carla
-
Blog post
Esperanto and Endangered Languages
Esperanto can be described as the language of hope, peace, and solidarity as Professor Renato Corsetti, General Secretary of the Academy of Esperanto has discussed in his previous posts for the European Studies blog. Hope remains the governing principle, as the name of the language attests (espero in Esperanto). Driven...Déri, Andrea
-
Blog post
Writing Tools for Interactive Fiction
Interactive fiction (IF), or interactive narrative/narration, is defined as “software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment.” The British Library has been collecting examples of UK interactive fiction as part of the Emerging Formats Project, which is a collaborative effort from all...Rossi, Giulia Carla
-
Blog post
When is a persistent identifier not persistent? Or an identifier?
Ever wondered what that bar code on the back of every book is? It’s an ISBN: an International Standard Book Number. Every modern book published has an ISBN, which uniquely identifies that book, and anyone publishing a book can get an ISBN for it whether an individual or a huge...Cope, Jez
-
Other
Guides to Choosing Persistent Identifiers - Version 3
The FREYA Project has compiled short guides to help with choosing persistent identifiers for various types of entities. These are the final version. The first versions were released in May 2020 for community feedback and comment throughout June 2020. Revised versions were developed in July 2020 and are published here....Madden, Frances ; van Horik, René ; van de Sandt, Stephanie ; Lavasa, Artemis ; Cousijn, Helena
-
Dataset
Sir Hans Sloane's Catalogues of his Library and Manuscripts
The files in this dataset are derived from microfilm copies of the original library catalogue of Sir Hans Sloane, now presented across 9 volumes, Sloane MS 3972 C 1-8, and the name index to the Sloane library catalogue, Sloane MS 3972 D. The catalogues are crucial for understanding the development...British Library
library, catalogues, Sloane, and metadata
-
Dataset
Freemason manuscripts in the Modern Archive collections
Dataset of brief biographical entries for 365 prominent Freemasons, with links to relevant material held with the British Library’s Modern Archives and Manuscript Collections, from the 18th to the 20th century. The dataset was supported with funding from the American Friends of the British Library, and was created by Tabitha...British Library
Freemasons and archives
-
Conference paper (unpublished)
Victorian decorated books with cloth covers in the second half of the nineteenth century
The developments of how the manufacture, embossing and blocking of cloth covers was achieved between 1825 and 1850 have been set out elsewhere. However, to set the scene for what came after 1850, I wish to briefly describe the machine embossing of cloth, and show some of the grain types....King, Ed
-
Lecture
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace evokes a response from almost everyone that you meet. Its fame is part of our culture. There were, of course two Crystal Palaces. They were built for different purposes. This talk will explain some of the motives that brought this about. I have concentrated upon British Library...King, Ed
-
Book chapter
UK Non-Print Legal Deposit: From Regulations to Review
Legal deposit is the statutory requirement for any publisher to deposit a copy of their publications with designated libraries. It plays a critical role in ensuring preservation of the nation’s cultural heritage by allowing systematic collection of the published output. It is the record of human memory, creativity and discovery...Arnold-Stratford, Linda ; Ovenden, Richard
-
Journal article
A Season of Place: Teaching Digital Mapping at the British Library
One of the British Library Digital Scholarship team’s core purposes is to deliver training to Library staff. Running since 2012, the main aim of the Digital Scholarship Training Program (DSTP) is to create opportunities for staff to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to support emerging areas of scholarship. Recently,...Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Rees, Gethin
training, access, British Library, Digital Scholarship, and digital mapping
-
Journal article
‘And since that time has never been heard of…’ The forgotten boys of the sea: Marine Society merchant sea apprentices, 1772–1873
The supply of child labour during Britain’s industrial revolution conjures mental imagery of destitute children toiling in mines and mills, but in recent years, historians have demonstrated that children worked in many nooks and crannies of the economy, not just the highly visible new industries. The shipping industry was a...Withall, Caroline
maritime apprenticeship, Marine Society, indentures, child labour, merchant shipping, apprenticeship, and merchant seamen
-
Journal article
Innovations in Learning and Teaching in Academic Libraries: Alignment, Collaboration, and the Social Turn
Academic libraries are central to the learning, teaching and research enterprise of their institutions. As emphasised by Brophy (2005, p. 216) “Academic libraries are here to enable and enhance learning in all its forms – whether it be the learning of a first year undergraduate coming to terms with what...Corrall, Sheila ; Jolly, Liz
-
Journal article
Libraries and the REF: how do librarians contribute to research excellence?
Librarians support research in a wide variety of ways. However, librarians may not always receive recognition for the valuable contributions they make to the research life cycle or research environments. In higher education institutions (HEIs), librarians face competition from other professional support services in addition to external organizations and suppliers....Walker, Dominic
research impact, REF, library, leadership, open research, and research assessment
-
Journal article
Understanding multispectral imaging of cultural heritage: Determining best practice in MSI analysis of historical artefacts
Although multispectral imaging (MSI) of cultural heritage, such as manuscripts, documents and artwork, is becoming more popular, a variety of approaches are taken and methods are often inconsistently documented. Furthermore, no overview of the process of MSI capture and analysis with current technology has previously been published. This research was...Jones, Cerys ; Duffy, Christina ; Gibson, Adam ; Terras, Melissa
workflow, best practice, digitization, cultural heritage imaging, advanced imaging analysis, and multispectral imaging
-
Journal article
MARC transformed: MARC and XML – the perfect partnership?
I first met a very British version of MARC (Machine Readable Cataloguing) in 1983, straight out of university. I didn't know anything about cataloguing, indexing, classification, or data. MARC made sense of it all. AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd Edition) was impenetrable without MARC as a framework. LCSH (Library of...Rosie, Heather
MarcEdit, LCSH, EThOS, Dublin Core, TDM, XML, MARC Report, metadata, MARC 21, MARC, OAI-PMH, and AACR2
-
Journal article
Knowledge management and information management: A tale of two siblings
Confusion has long existed between knowledge management (KM) and information management (IM). To the uninitiated, the difference between KM and IM is unclear – largely because there are no universally accepted definitions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’. But the confusion is not limited to the uninitiated. KM and IM specialists argue...Payne, Judy ; Fryer, Jonathan
knowledge and information management confusion, KM, IM, information management, and knowledge management
-
Journal article
MPs on the Subject of STEMM: What Can Oral History Tell Us?
A growing collection of archived oral history interviews with former MPs offers historians new opportunities to study the influences that have directed MPs’ routes into elected office and their behaviour in the House of Commons. This article draws on evidence in the interviews to consider the extent to which an...Ledgerwood, Emmeline
science, maths, medicine, committee, occupation, technology, engineering, oral history, and MP
-
Journal article
Turkic Typologies: Ideology and Indigenous Linguistic Knowledge in the Work of Bekir Çobanzade
The current work is an exploration of the life and linguistic scholarship of the Crimean Tatar linguist Bekir Çobanzade. In it, I pay particular attention to the impact of the author's socio-political environment, especially the rise of Stalinism, on his works relating to the history and classification of the Turkic...Erdman, Michael
-
Journal article
‘An ‘authentic’ performance?: The cultural politics of ‘folk’ in Bengal and Bangladesh’ (part 2)
Folk performance genres have long been adapted to shorter formats for festivals, films, television and the new media. Contemporary practices of Kobigaan (a verse-duelling/song theatre genre) reveal how it functions differently for different communities relying on their cultural/collective memory of the genre. This section of the article first engages with...Basu, Priyanka
cultural memory, souvenir, festivals, sound chronotope, and Bengali cinema
-
Journal article
Reviewing football history through the UK Web Archive
The UK Web Archive aims to archive, preserve and give access to the UK webspace. This aim is achieved through an annual domain crawl, in addition to frequent crawls of selected websites and specially curated collections. These collections reflect important aspects of British culture and events that shape society. Sport...Byrne, Helena