Aly Conteh Digitisation Programme Manager

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• Aly ContehDigitisation Programme Manager
• 20th May 2008

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The British Library

• Over 150 million collection items, including
• Books, serials, newspapers, manuscripts, maps,
  photographs, prints and drawings, patent
  specifications, music scores, sound discs,
  stamps..
• Storage 650 linear kilometers, growth rate 11
  kilometers a year
• Website 5 million unique users, 60 million pages
  served
• Reading Rooms 400,000 visitors
• Treasures include
• Magna Carta, Lindisfarne Gospels, Leonardo da
  Vincis Notebook, The Times first edition (18
  March 1788), Beatles manuscripts, recording of
  Nelson Mandelas trial speech.

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What have we done

• Created over 50 million digital objects
• Have several 100s TB in our digital store
• Provide Access through
• Website in digital collections, Images On-line,
  TTP
• In Reading Rooms
• External Websites Publishers, Academic
  Institutions
• Facsimiles/Publications
• Digitised 1 of our collections

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What are we currently doing

• Partnership with Microsoft to digitise 25 million
  pages of 19th Century books
• 1 million pages of pre-1900 British national and
  regional newspapers
• 4,000 hours of sound recording
• Various manuscript digitisation projects

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What are some of the challenges for us
User Interface (web interface, user functionality)
Sustainability
Interoperability
Standards
Interface Technologies
IP
Navigation
Search (keyword full text)
Supporting Text (e.g. commentary)
Full Text (OCR manual keying)
Metadata (Structural, Descriptive, Technical,
Preservation)
Digital Preservation
Images (Service version)
Images (Archival versions)
Non Digital Surrogates (e.g. microfilm)
Original Material
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What are some of the challenges for us

• Funding
• IPR
• Long Term Preservation
• Sustainability
• Selection Criteria
• Standards
• Access
• Partnerships
• Workflows

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Access

• How do we ensure that the resources that we
  create are what our users require?
• Customer Quality Expectations
• What are some of the things we do
• User Panels
• Usability Labs
• Awareness of trends

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Access

• How can we improve the user experience?
• Poor Quality OCR
• Amount of data
• Lack of tools to manipulate historical text
• European Commission funded project
• 15 partners
• Advance state of the art in OCR
• Develop language tools and lexica in order to
  provide access to historical texts
• Build a network of competence centres in order to
  provide a single access point for all players
  involved in mass-digitisation

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Thank You

• www.bl.uk
• aly.conteh_at_bl.uk