BL Labs Roadshow 2016

1330  Introduction
Dr Beatrice Alex, Research Fellow at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

1335 Doing digital research at the British Library Nora McGregor, Digital Curator at the British Library

The Digital Research Team is a cross-disciplinary mix of curators, researchers, librarians and programmers supporting the creation and innovative use of British Library’s digital collections. In this talk Nora will highlight how we work with those operating at the intersection of academic research, cultural heritage and technology to support new ways of exploring and accessing our collections through; getting content in digital form and online; collaborative projects; offering digital research support and guidance.

1405  British Library Labs
Mahendra Mahey, Project Manager of British Library Labs.

The British Library Labs project supports and inspires scholars to use the British Library’s incredible digital collections in exciting and innovative ways for their research, through various activities such as competitions, awards, events and projects.

Labs will highlight some of the work that they and others are doing around digital content in libraries and also talk about ways to encourage researchers to engage with the British Library. They will present information on the annual BL Labs Competition, which closes this year on 11th April 2016. Through the Competition, Labs encourages researchers to submit their important research question or creative idea which uses the British Library’s digital content and data. Two Competition winners then work in residence at the British Library for five months and then showcase the results of their work at the annual Labs Symposium in November 2016.

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

1420  Overview projects that have used British Library’s Digital Content and data.
Ben O’Steen, Technical Lead of British Library Labs.

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

1500 Coffee and networking

1530 BL Labs Awards: Research runner up project: “Palimpsest: Telling Edinburgh’s Stories with Maps�
Professor James Loxley, Palimpsest, University of Edinburgh

Palimpsest seeks to find new ways to present and explore Edinburgh’s literary cityscape, through interfaces showcasing extracts from a wide range of celebrated and lesser known narrative texts set in the city. In this talk, James will set out some of the project’s challenges, and some of the possibilities for the use of cultural data that it has helped to unearth.

1600 Geoparsing Historical Texts data
Dr Claire Grover, Senior Research Fellow, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Claire will talk about work the Edinburgh Language Technology Group have been doing for Jisc on geoparsing historical texts such as the British Library’s Nineteenth Century Books and Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership which is creating standardized, accurate XML/SGML encoded electronic text editions of early print books.

1630 Finish

Feedback for the event
Please complete the following feedback form.

Share/Bookmark