Search Constraints
Search Results
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Disentangling Digital Preservation Risk: An Interdisciplinary Exploration and Solution
Memory institutions such as the British Library face the important challenge of preserving their digital collections for future generations. Disciplinary efforts to address this challenge are extensive but demonstrate significant inconsistency and uncertainty about how the field understands risk, as well as what it considers to be a valid response....Pennock, Maureen
libraries, risk, risk science, archives, digital preservation, reference model, and design science
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Journal article
Libros religiosos coloniales de la British Library: libros impresos en México, Perú, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador y Guatemala, 1543/4-1800
El propósito del presente artículo no es otro que poner en manos del lector una lista clasificada de libros sobre religión impresos en Hispanoamérica en los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII y actualmente conservados en la British Library. Se excluyen : pleitos en los que participan religiosos ; documentos sobre...Taylor, Barry ; West, Geoffrey
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Journal article
Chinese plates fit for an Acehnese queen
All over Southeast Asia is found a particular type of coarse Chinese export porcelain traditionally known as ‘Swatow’ ware but now more accurately identified as originating from Zhangzhou, dating from the late Ming period, from the end of the 16th to the early 17th centuries. One characteristic type of large...Gallop, Annabel Teh
Acehnese ninefold seal, Zhangzhou, Cap Sikureueng, Chinese porcelain, Chinese plates, Aceh, and Swatow
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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.
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Journal article
Design Choices for Productive, Secure, Data-Intensive Research at Scale in the Cloud
We present a policy and process framework for secure environments for productive data science research projects at scale, by combining prevailing data security threat and risk profiles into five sensitivity tiers, and, at each tier, specifying recommended policies for data classification, data ingress, software ingress, data egress, user access, user...Arenas, Diego ; Atkins, Jon ; Austin, Claire ; Beavan, David ; Cabrejas Egea, Alvaro …
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Software
Living-with-machines/MapReader: End of LwM
This release marks the end of the current funding for MapReader during the Living with Machines (LwM) project. @kasra-hosseini @andrewphilipsmith @rwood-97 @kmcdono2 @dcsw2 @kallewesterling @kasparvonbeelenHosseini, Kasra ; Wood, Rosie ; Smith, Andy ; McDonough, Katie ; Wilson, Daniel C. S. …
computer vision and maps
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Dataset
Diachronic word embeddings from 19th-century newspapers digitised by the British Library (1800-1919)
Word vectors related to the paper "Machines in the media: semantic change in the lexicon of mechanization in 19th-century British newspapers" by Nilo Pedrazzini and Barbara McGillivray (2022). The embeddings were trained on a 4.2-billion-word corpus of 19th-century British newspapers using Word2Vec and specific parameters. The embeddings are divided into...Pedrazzini, Nilo ; McGillivray, Barbara
historical semantics, word-vectors, late-modern-english, newspapers, diachronic-embeddings, and word2vec
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Dataset
Decade-level Word2Vec models from automatically transcribed 19th-century newspapers digitised by the British Library (1800-1919)
Word embeddings trained on a 4.2-billion-word corpus of 19th-century British newspapers using Word2Vec and specific parameters. The embeddings are divided into periods of ten years each. Unlike those in this repository, these were not aligned and OCR errors skimmed from the vocabulary. See related GitHub repository for the full documentation:...Pedrazzini, Nilo
historical semantics, British newspapers, word embeddings, word vectors, word2vec, and Late Modern English
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Dataset
Diachronic and diatopic word embeddings from newspapers digitised by the British Library (1830-1889): North and South England
Diachronic word embeddings (decade-level) trained with Word2Vec (via Gensim) on different geographic subcorpora of the Heritage Made Digital British and the Living with Machines historical newspaper collections: - North England (north.zip) - South England (south.zip) At the moment, for each subcorpus, Word2Vec models are available for each decade in the...Pedrazzini, Nilo ; McGillivray, Barbara
historical semantics, diachronic embeddings, late modern English, word embeddings, word vectors, word2vec, and diatopic embeddings
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Conference paper (unpublished)
A Deep Learning Approach to Geographical Candidate Selection through Toponym Matching
Recognizing toponyms and resolving them to their real-world referents is required for providing advanced semantic access to textual data. This process is often hindered by the high degree of variation in toponyms. Candidate selection is the task of identifying the potential entities that can be referred to by a toponym... -
Abstract
Using smart annotations to map the geography of newspapers
Geographic information is a key component in the description of collection objects, and yet its format is often unsuited for use with methods of geographic analysis. Catalogue entries are often inconsistent, in plain text, and without geographic coordinates (much less coordinates linked to authority records). Georesolution of the relevant fields...Ryan, Yann ; Coll Ardanuy, Mariona ; van Strien, Daniel ; Hosseini, Kasra ; Beelen, Kaspar …
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Other
Models for MapReader ACM SIGSPATIAL 2023 Geohumanities Workshop paper
Collection of fine-tuned models created during research published in Kasra Hosseini, Daniel C. S. Wilson, Kaspar Beelen, and Katherine McDonough. 2022. MapReader: a computer vision pipeline for the semantic exploration of maps at scale. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geospatial Humanities (GeoHumanities '22). Association for...Hosseini, Kasra ; Beelen, Kaspar ; McDonough, Katherine ; Wilson, Daniel C. S.
computational humanities, computer vision, maps, models, and image classification
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Learning object
Computer Vision for the Humanities: An Introduction to Deep Learning for Image Classification (Part 1)
This is the first of a two-part lesson introducing deep learning based computer vision methods for humanities research. Using a dataset of historical newspaper advertisements and the fastai Python library, the lesson walks through the pipeline of training a computer vision model to perform image classification.Strien, Daniel van ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Wevers, Melvin ; Smits, Thomas ; McDonough, Katherine
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Learning object
Computer Vision for the Humanities: An Introduction to Deep Learning for Image Classification (Part 2)
This is the second of a two-part lesson introducing deep learning based computer vision methods for humanities research. This lesson digs deeper into the details of training a deep learning based computer vision model. It covers some challenges one may face due to the training data used and the importance...Strien, Daniel van ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Wevers, Melvin ; Smits, Thomas ; McDonough, Katherine
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Book chapter
How we got here
Wilson, Daniel C.S.
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Book chapter
Text Meets Space: Geographic Content Extraction, Resolution and Information Retrieval
In this half-day tutorial, we will review the basic concepts of, methods for, and applications of geographic information retrieval, also showing some possible applications in fields such as the digital humanities. The tutorial is organized in four parts. First we introduce some basic ideas about geography, and demonstrate why text...Leidner, Jochen ; Martins, Bruno ; McDonough, Katherine ; Purves, Ross
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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
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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 …
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Journal article
Abroad Among Our Kind: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Spanish Civil War Love Poems
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner Valentine Ackland arrived in Barcelona in the fall of 1936, two months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. They had come to help with the relief operations being organized...Aguirre, Mercedes
Love Poems, Spain, and Civil War
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Journal article
Great Doxology with Miaphysite Trisagion
The article contains the edition and study of three ostraca in the British Library (Ostracon 5878) which join with another fragment in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (P.Mon.Epiph. 607). The join of these pieces helps to date the British Library fragments to the turn of the 6th-7th centuries and assign...Toth, Peter
Monastery of Epiphanius, Liturgical ostraca, Apa Moses, Great Doxology, and Coptic liturgy
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Journal article
Scientific investigation of the Minsterley Maidens’ crowns
25 samples were taken from seven eighteenth-century commemorative Maidens’ Garlands and Crowns from Minsterley, Shropshire. The samples were investigated by digital microscopy, macro-X-ray fluorescence scanning, Raman microscopy and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The study intended to obtain as much information as possible on the making of the...Risdonne, Valentina ; Melita, Lucia Noor ; Burgio, Lucia ; Morris, Rosie
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Journal article
Writing Milan and Turin in the Light of (Failed) Utopia: Luciano Bianciardi and Paolo Volponi
This article examines a series of novels by Italian writers, Luciano Bianciardi and Paolo Volponi, that capture the transformations brought about by the post-World War II economic growth in the urban-industrial society of Northern Italy. The analysis draws on utopia as, in Ruth Levitas’s words, a ‘desire for a better...Brecciaroli, Giulia
Paolo Volponi, Utopia/dystopia, Turin, Luciano Bianciardi, Literary Urban Studies, Milan, and post-war Italian literature
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Book chapter
The sociability of scientific knowledge exchange in British Farming, 1950-90
This is a single chapter from an edited collection that has the following abstract: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, agricultural practices and rural livelihoods were challenged by changes such as commercialization, intensified global trade, and rapid urbanization. Planting Seeds of Knowledge studies the relationship between these agricultural...Horrocks, Sally ; Martin, John ; Merchant, Paul
agrciculture, food, and farming
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Book chapter
Blue Heritage Among Fishermen of Mafia Island, Tanzania
Off the South-East coast of Tanzania, at the mouth of the Rufiji River, lies the Mafia archipelago. This chapter explores the concept of blue heritage by showing how the fishermen of Mafia have altered their language, perception of time and sense of community to include the sea and its animals....de Haan, Mariam
ethnography, Rufiji River, Tanzania, whale sharks, fishing communities, fishing, Mafia archipelago, and fish
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Conference paper (published)
“Webcomics Archive? Now I'm Interested”: Comics Readers Seeking Information in Web Archives
There is a longstanding tradition of understanding information needs and interaction behavior across different user groups to inform the design of digital products and services. There is a gap in such research of comics readers, specifically how they seek and interact with the information and interfaces of web-based archives provided...Berube, Linda ; Makri, Stephann ; Cooke, Ian ; Priego, Ernesto ; Wisdom, Stella
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Journal article
FAST the Inside Track: Where We Are, Where Do We Want to Be, and How Do We Get There?
This is an overview of the development of FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) from its inception in the late 1990s, through its development and implementation to the work being undertaken by OCLC and the FAST Policy and Outreach Committee (FPOC) to develop and promote FAST. FPOC members explain how... -
Journal article
Vehicularizing the vernacular: using the periodical press to popularize vernacular languages in Soviet Turkic communities
The study of language and script change among the Turkic communities of the Soviet Union often focuses on the switch from Arabic to Latin scripts. Less attention is paid to adaptations of the Arabic script to Turkic vernaculars, and to attempts aimed at convincing the literate masses of their usefulness....Erdman, Michael J.
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Book
Making Miracles in Medieval England
The cult of the saints was central to medieval Christianity largely due to the miraculous. Saints were members of the elect of heaven and could intercede with God on the behalf of supplicants. Whilst people visited shrines and prayed to the saints for many reasons it was the hope of...Lynch, Tom
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Journal article
The British Library – rethinking physical storage
Purpose The British Library (BL) faces a significant challenge with storage space predicted to run out within the next three years. However, alongside a plan to create additional capacity, the BL also intends to take the opportunity to rethink the integration of storage and workflows in order to implement a...Appleyard, Andrew H.
storage, library, automated, sustainability, and repository
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Book chapter
Library partnerships in an age of openness
Librarians are strong collaborators. As we move toward the “next normal,” partnerships and collaboration will play an even larger role. In our post-pandemic world, what does “open” mean in terms of access to libraries, their staff, and their services? National libraries, for example, are still, to some extent, fixed in...Jolly, Liz
public libraries, collaboration, hybrid digital, open libraries, COVID-19 and libraries, library partnerships, national libraries, British Library, library mission, and access
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Journal article
A literature review of palm leaf manuscript conservation—Part 2: historic and current conservation treatments, boxing and storage, religious and ethical issues, recommendations for best practice
Abstract The closure of the British Library during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic allowed the conservation department to undertake a treatment review of the conservation of palm leaf manuscripts in order to make better-informed decisions about the treatment of these complex objects. As part of the review a questionnaire was posted...Wiland, Julia ; Brown, Rick ; Fuller, Lizzie ; Havelock, Lea ; Johnson, Jackie …
traditional preservation methods, palm leaf, ethical conservation, boxing, and long-term storage
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Journal article
A literature review of palm leaf manuscript conservation—Part 1: a historic overview, leaf preparation, materials and media, palm leaf manuscripts at the British Library and the common types of damage
Abstract The closure of the British Library during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic allowed the conservation department to undertake a treatment review of the conservation of palm leaf manuscripts in order to make better-informed decisions about the treatment of these complex objects. As part of the review a questionnaire was posted... -
Journal article
Reframing Magna Carta – Comprehensive Planning and Pragmatic Outcomes
In preparation for the British Library’s exhibition to mark 800 years of Magna Carta, the Library’s copies of the charter, and three related documents, were reframed. There were several requirements: minimal intervention; allow re-treatability; fully show rectos and text; present the charters as documents rather than artworks. Comprehensive risk assessments...Garside, Paul ; Rogerson, Cordelia ; Moorhead, Gavin ; Matsuoka, Kumiko ; Duffy, Christina
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Journal article
The Use of Risk Management to Support Preventive Conservation
Risk management approaches have been increasingly used at the British Library to inform and support collection care decisions. This paper addresses the ways in which these methods have been used to address specific preservation issues at the Library, using appropriate case studies: rehousing the microfilm collection, adapting pest management protocols,...Garside, Paul ; Bradford, Karen ; Hamlyn, Sarah
collection care, preservation, risk management, and risk assessment
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Journal article
The conservation of the burnt Cotton Collection
The Cotton Collection is one of the British Library's foundation collections and represents the single greatest known resource of medieval and early modern British history and literature. Its care and conservation are of great importance to allow access to the collection both now and in the future. The collection had...Beltran de Guevara, Mariluz ; Garside, Paul
burnt parchment, damage, survey, scientific research, and conservation treatment
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Journal article
Categorizing tin phosphate/silicate-weighted silks on site by near-infrared spectroscopy
One of the most versatile instrumental analytical techniques for the non-interventive characterization of organic artefacts is near-infrared spectroscopy. In the case of textiles, methodology has recently emerged for assessing the condition of historic silks on site and a corresponding protocol that allows the simultaneous weighting categorization of silks would be...Garside, Paul ; Wyeth, Paul ; Zhang, Xiaomei
costume, silk, tin weighting, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), weighting classification, and multivariate analysis
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Journal article
Increasing the profile and influence of conservation—an unexpected benefit of risk assessments
Risk assessment prior to treatments, exhibitions or loans is vital to conservation, allowing potential problems to be identified and mitigated. After recent work on British Library ‘Treasures’, including the Magna Carta and the Lindisfarne Gospels, it became apparent that these assessments also served to significantly raise the profile and influence...Rogerson, Cordelia ; Garside, Paul
risk assessment, loans, stakeholders, decision making, pragmatic, and conservation
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Journal article
Understanding the ageing behaviour of nineteenth and twentieth century tin‐weighted silks
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries silks processed in Europe were frequently weighted with tin phosphate/silicate. There is particular concern over these silks in collections, since they appear susceptible to catastrophic deterioration. The aim of this research was to better understand the consequences of tin weighting on the...Garside, Paul ; Wyeth, Paul ; Zhang, Xiaomei
humidity ageing, light ageing, thermal ageing, tin weighting, preventive conservation, and silk
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Book chapter
The role of fibre identification in textile conservation
Accurate identification of fibres is vital to textile conservators. Such knowledge, in conjunction with an understanding of the properties and usage of textile materials, will inform conservation, display and storage strategies. It may further help to annotate biographical detail concerning the origins of the textile and related history. Microscopy has...Garside, P.
textile conservation, fibre identification, fibre microscopy, and fibre spectroscopy
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Journal article
Under the Impression: Multispectral Imaging of Lord Frederick Campbell Charter XXI 5
Lord Frederick Campbell Charter 5 is the only surviving English document that still has an authentic, legible, pre-Conquest seal attached to it. The text purports to be a writ of Edward the Confessor (1003x5–1066) granting a slew of rights to Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury. We examined the writ using multispectral...Hudson, Alison ; Duffy, Christina
multispectral imaging, digital humanities, conservation, seals, early medieval history, writs, and Norman Conquest
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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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Journal article
Boccherini as Chamber Composer to Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia: some insights from the Catalogues of the king’s Music Collection
King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia (1744-1797) had a strong interest in Boccherini’s music already from his time as Crown Prince. His collection contained almost the complete published oeuvre of the composer, acquired before Boccherini’s official employment with him begun. In October 1783 the prince sent a letter of interest...Drosopoulou, Loukia