open data | Open World

open data | Open World
Open World
Lorna M Campbell
I know it’s a crowded field, but I came across an AI / open data development recently that really made me stop and take a breath.
The Living Museum
introduces itself as follows:
If the artifacts in museums could talk, what would you say to them? Would you ask about their origins, or what life was like back in their eras? Or would you simply listen to their stories?
Created by an independent developer,
Jonathan Talmi
, The Living Museum is an experimental AI interface that uses content from the BM’s open licensed
digital collections database
to enable users to curate personalised exhibits and “talk” to individual artefacts about their history and origins.  The developer is unaffiliated with the British Museum and makes it clear that the data is used under the terms of the CC BY-NC-SA licence.
In an
introductory blog post
Talmi says
I hope this project demonstrates that technology like AI can increase immersion, thereby improving educational outcomes, without sacrificing authenticity or factuality.
The app was launched on the Museums Computer Group mailing list and twitter a couple of weeks ago and it was met with a generally favourable response.  However there were some dissenting voices, from curators, art historians, and authors, who pointed out the problematic nature of imposing AI generated voices onto artefacts of deep spiritual and cultural significance, whose presence in the BM’s collections is hugely contested.
Others questioned the macabre ethics of foisting an artificial voice on actual human remains, such as the museum’s collection of mummies.  I had a surreal conversation with the mummy of Cleopatra, who died in Thebes aged 17, during the reign of Trajan. It was a deeply unsettling experience.
This is where “authenticity and factuality” were both sacrificed…
The response actually acknowledges the disrespectful and ethically questionable nature of the whole project. My head was starting to melt at this point.
Pressing the question of repatriation prompts the voice to “step out of the artificial artifact persona”…
The whole experience was as surreal as it was disturbing
There was also criticism from some quarters that the developer had “exploited” the work of professional curators by using the British Museum’s data set without their explicit knowledge or permission.  It’s important to note that the CC BY-NC-SA licence does explicitly allow anyone to use the British Museum’s data within the terms of the licence, however just because the license says you
can
, doesn’t necessarily mean you
should
. When it comes to reusing open content, the licence is not the only thing that should be taken into consideration.  This is one of the key points raised by the
Ethics of Open Sharing
working group commissioned by Creative Commons in 2021, and led by Josie Fraser. The report of the working group acknowledges that not everything should be shared openly, and highlights issues relating to cultural appropriation:
Ethical open sharing may require working in partnership with individuals, communities and groups and ensuring their voices are heard and approaches respected. While in some cases openly sharing resources can help to promote cultural heritage and redress gaps in knowledge, in others it may be experienced as cultural insensitivity, disrespect or appropriation — for example, in relation to sacred objects or stories and funerary remains.
Something that both the British Museum and developers using its digital collections should perhaps consider.
By coincidence, the launch of The Living Museum coincided with the release of
Mati Diop
‘s film
Dahomey
, winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear award.
Dahomey
, also gives a voice to sacred cultural artefacts; a collection of looted treasures being repatriated from France to the former kingdom of Dahomey, in current day Benin. In Diop’s absorbing and hypnotic film the power figure of the Dahomeyan king Ghezo speaks in
Fon
, his voice disembodied and electronically modified.
In an interview with Radio 4’s
Screenshoot
(23:20), Diop spoke eloquently about “the violence of the absence of the artefacts from the African continent.”
“These artefacts are not objects, they have been objectified by the Western eye, by the colonial perspective, locked into different stages, art objects, ethnographic objects, even locked into beauty.”
“To me it was immediate to give back a voice to these artefacts because I felt that the film is what restitution is about, which is giving back a voice, which is giving back a narrative, a perspective. The film tries to embody the meaning of restitution.”
I was lucky enough to see
Dahomey
at the GFT accompanied by a conversation with Giovanna Vitelli, Head of Collections at
The Hunterian
, and Dr Christa Roodt and Andreas Giorgallis, University of Glasgow.  The Hunterian is just one of a number of museums interrogating the harms perpetuated by their colonial legacy, through their
Curating Discomfort
intervention.  The conversation touched on power, control and sacredness, with Vitelli noting
“Possession means power. We, the museums, hold the power, and control the power of language.  The film speaks powerfully about voices we in the global north do not hear.”
I’ve written in the past about the importance of considering
whose voices are included and excluded
from open spaces and the creation and curation of open knowledge. On the surface it may appear that AI initiatives facilitated by the cultural commons, like The Living Museum, have the potential to bring collections to life and give a voice to marginalised subjects, however it’s important to question the authenticity of those voices.  By imposing inauthentic AI generated voices on culturally sensitive artefacts there is a serious risk of perpetuating exploitative colonial legacies and racist ideology, rather than addressing harms and increasing knowledge equity. Something for us all to think about.
Last week I presented one of the
keynotes
at the
FLOSS UK Spring Conference
in Edinburgh.  I had been invited to present as the organising committee were keen to diversify both the scope and the gender balance of their event, after a first call for papers brought in only male speakers.  Persuaded by the enthusiasm and commitment of the organisers, and after discussing the invitation with colleagues at the University, I accepted their invitation.  However after a second round of blind peer review again brought in only male speakers (thus illustrating the problem of blind submission in any domain that already lacks diversity) I began to get a bit apprehensive.  Normally I would politely decline an invitation to participate in an all-male panel and now here I was keynoting at an all-male conference.
I discussed my concerns with the organisers who once again were sensitive to the issue, keen to talk and open to suggestions.  And I was more than a little relieved when my inspirational senior colleague Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at University of Edinburgh was invited to open the conference, and Christel Dahlskjaer, VP of Open Source and Digital Advocacy at Private Internet Access, was also added to the programme.
My talk was scheduled to take place on the second day, but I went along on the first day to hear Melissa’s opening address and Debian Project Leader Chris Lamb’s keynote.  I had expected female delegates to be in the minority, but I was a little startled to discover there were only three women in the room out of an audience in the region of around eighty people.  Melissa raised this issue diplomatically in her opening address which included a call for more diversity and inclusion in technology industries.
Although I get a little keyed up when I’m speaking in public I don’t generally get
too
nervous, however I was extremely apprehensive about presenting a non-technical keynote to an all-male audience of technical developers.  Particularly given that my talk, an over view of the
Open Knowledge Landscape
, highlighted the problem of systemic bias and structural inequality in a wide range of “open” communities.  In an effort to work up a little courage I did something I don’t often do; I called for back-up.  The evening before my keynote I tweeted…
I need all the
#femedtech
people and
#uncommonwomen
to send good thoughts my way tomorrow morning. I'm giving a keynote at an all male tech conference.
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell)
April 26, 2018
To say that I was overwhelmed by the response would be an understatement, so I’d like to thank each and every one of you who replied to my tweet, I can’t tell you how much I appreciated your support.
I also tweeted a thread of all the inspiring projects and initiatives that I had included in my talk, because if you’re speaking about diversity and representation I think it’s really important to give credit where credit is due.  The twitter thread proved to be really popular so I might do this again next time I’m giving a talk.
For those that are interested, here are some of the people and projects I'll be highlighting in my keynote (thread)
#femedtech
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell)
April 26, 2018
On the morning of my keynote I was encouraged to see a couple more women in the audience, maybe five in total?  But it was still pretty daunting to get up onto that stage.  The audience however were faultlessly polite and engaged, particularly when I spoke about structural inequality and lack of representation in technology domains and open communities.
I ended by highlighting the story of
Bassel Khartabil
and the
Memorial Fund
that Creative Commons established to commemorate his legacy, because I believe it demonstrates why it’s so important for all those of us who work in the broad domain of Open Knowledge to come together to break down the barriers that divide us.  I always find it difficult to talk about Bassel and this time was no exception. I choked when I tried to read a passage he wrote from Adra Prison in Damascus and I was almost in tears by the end.  However I make no apology for getting emotional over such an important story.
There was only time for a couple of questions after my talk, one about business models for openness and another about how the conference could become more diverse and inclusive without compromising the integrity of their peer review process. During the break afterwards, I was really touched by a young delegate from the University of York who said he had benefitted so much from working in open source software projects and using Wikipedia, and wanted to know how he could give something back to the community.  I suggested becoming a Wikipedia editor and gave him some pointers on how to get started.  And I also really enjoyed chatting with some Edinburgh Informatics students who were hugely enthusiastic about the University’s commitment to Open Knowledge. Although there wasn’t a great deal of activity around the conference hashtag, I was touched to get one or two really supportive comments from delegates.
Sad to say that I had never heard of this very powerful story until today:
thanks to
@LornaMCampbell
for her illuminating talk at
#flossuk2018
#opencommunities
— Mark Keating (@shadowcat_mdk)
April 27, 2018
Fantastic keynote by
@LornaMCampbell
@flossuk
on open knowledge, systemic bias and barriers and the cost of freedom. Inspiring and moving. So much to do.
— Magnus Hagdorn (@mhagdorn)
April 27, 2018
Tim, Marko and Mike G from our team had a really good time at
#flossuk2018
. Many thanks to the organisers for a great event. Our highlight was
@LornaMCampbell
’s fantastic keynote this morning.
— The Scale Factory (@scalefactory)
April 27, 2018
All in all the conference was a pretty daunting event for me, but it’s one that I learned a lot from, not least how supportive my own Open Knowledge community is and how willing other communities can be to listen to new stories and alternative points of view.  So I’d like the take this opportunity to thank the organisers once again for inviting me to keynote.
Last word has to go to the fabulous Kelsey Merkley.
Vulnerability is a strength and a indicator of true leadership. Is there a video somewhere?
Way to take up space and kick the door in.
— 💫Kelsey Merkley 💫 (@bella_velo)
April 27, 2018
I loved the tweet stream of projects highlighted. A nudge is as good as a kick.
— 💫Kelsey Merkley 💫 (@bella_velo)
April 27, 2018
Transcript and slides from my keynote at the
FLOSS UK Spring Conference
in Edinburgh.
Exploring the Open Knowledge Landscape
from
Lorna Campbell
I’m not a programmer.  I’m not a developer.  And I don’t contribute directly to the creation of free and open source software.  I originally started out as an Archaeologist but I now work in the domain of Open Knowledge and more specifically open education.  I currently work for the Open Education Resources Service within the Information Services Group at the University of Edinburgh, I’m a Board member of both the Association for Learning Technology and Wikimedia UK, and a member of Open Knowledge International’s Open Education Working Group. All these organisations are part of the Open Knowledge landscape and what I want to do today is provide a broad overview of some of the different domains, communities and cultures that make up this landscape including open education, open data, open textbooks and Open Access Scholarly works.  And I also want to explore the boundaries that crisscross this landscape and demarcate these open spaces, and ask who is included, who is excluded, and what we can do to make our communities more diverse and inclusive.
In the words of the late, great Maryam Mirzakhani, former professor of mathematics at Stanford University and the first female winner of the Fields Medal, who sadly passed away last year.
“I like crossing the imaginary boundaries people set up between different fields—it’s very refreshing. There are lots of tools, and you don’t know which one would work. It’s about being optimistic and trying to connect things.”
So that’s what I want to do today, to look at how we can cross the imaginary boundaries of the Open Knowledge landscape and connect our different open communities.
Continue reading
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working with Morna Simpson, of
Girl Geek Scotland
, on
Innovating with Open Knowledge
, an IS Innovation Fund project at the University of Edinburgh, that aims to provide creative individuals, independent scholars, entrepreneurs, and SMEs with the  information literacy skills to find and access free and open research outputs and content produced by Higher Education.
Since the
Finch Report
and RCUK’s
Policy on Open Access,
universities increasingly make their research outputs available through a wide range of open channels including Open Access journals and repositories, data libraries, research explorer services, and research and innovation services.
Free and open access to publicly‐funded research enables the research process to operate more efficiently, disseminates research outputs more widely, fosters technology transfer and innovation, and provides social and economic benefits by increasing the use and understanding of research by businesses, governments, charities and the wider public. Open Access is also in line with the government’s commitment to transparency and open data, and it contributes to the global Open Knowledge movement more generally.
However it’s not always easy for those outwith academia to know how to access open research outputs, even though they are freely and openly available to all.  In order to improve technology transfer we need to do more to disseminate Open Access research, open knowledge and open content to the general public, creative individuals, entrepreneurs and SMEs.  This is the challenge that the Innovating with Open Knowledge project sought to address.
Innovating with Open Knowledge has produced a series of eleven open licensed case studies featuring a wide range of innovative individuals and companies that have used the University of Edinburgh’s open knowledge outputs to further their projects, products and initiatives.  The case studies are composed of video interviews, supplementary text transcripts, learning activities and search tasks, and they demonstrate how entrepreneurs and creative individuals can find, use and engage with Open Access scholarly works, open science, images and media, physical resources and maker spaces, open data and open-source software.
Case Studies
Creative Writing:
Writing historical fiction with Peter Ramscombe
Citizenship:
The Conscientious Objectors Project with Nick Williams at WEA Scotland
Climate Change:
Solving Climate Change with Ecometrica
Crafts:
Bookbinding with Emma Frazer
Heritage:
Spirit of Leithers with Fraser Parkinson
Maker Spaces:
uCreate Studio with Mike Boyd
Grand designs:
Wikihouse with Akiko Kobayashi and Duncan Bain
Open-source Software:
with Scott Wilson, Cetis LLP & OSS Watch
Citizen Science:
Dogslife with Dylan Clements
Bioinformatics:
Bioinformatics in the Classroom with Heleen Plaisier & Daniel Barker
Drug Discovery:
Parkure with Lysimachos Zografos
Innovating with Open Knowledge also features expert guidance on finding and accessing open knowledge from the University’s
Centre for Research Collections
and
OER Service
, and from the
National Library of Scotland
All resources are available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence and can be accessed from the Innovating with Open Knowledge website
Videos can also be downloaded from
Media Hopper Create
Please feel free to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute these open resources.
Innovating with Open Knowledge, CC BY-SA, University of Edinburgh
This project was funded by the University of Edinburgh IS Innovation Fund, with generous support from Gavin McLachlan, CIO,  and Hugh Edmiston, Director of Corporate Services. The project was steered by Melissa Highton, Assistant Principal Online Learning, and managed by Lorna M. Campbell, Learning, Teaching and Web Services.  All video and text resources were created by
Morna Simpson
, Girl Geek Scotland and Enterprise Porridge Ltd. Graphic design by
Interactive Content Service
, University of Edinburgh.
Last week I was invited to speak at the
International Open Science Conference
in Berlin which this year had a special focus on OER.  My talk featured a case study of the University of Edinburgh’s
Geosicence Outreach and Engagement Course
so I’d like to thank Colin Graham and all those involved in the course for allowing me to present their inspirational work.
Crossing the Field Boundaries – Open Science, Open Data and Open Education
from
Lorna Campbell
This talk focuses on the interface between OER, open data and open science and our experience at the University of Edinburgh of promoting open education through the School of GeoSciences Outreach and Engagement course.
The title of this paper, “Crossing the field boundaries”, comes not from the domain of GeoScicences though, but from
Maryam Mirzakhani
, professor of mathematics at Stanford University and the first female winner of the Fields Medal.  In a 2014 interview Maryam said
“I like crossing the imaginary boundaries people set up between different fields—it’s very refreshing. There are lots of tools, and you don’t know which one would work. It’s about being optimistic and trying to connect things.”
A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
Quanta Magazine
, August 2014
I am not a mathematician, or a scientist, but I do have some experience of crossing field boundaries, and since open education is all about breaking down boundaries and cutting across fields, this seems like a nice metaphor to hang this talk on.
Continue reading
How is it March already?!  I’ve been sorely neglecting this blog for the past few months, not because I’ve got nothing to say, quite the opposite, I’ve been so tied up with different projects I’ve barely had a chance to write a single blog post! A poor excuse I know, but anyway, here’s a very brief run down of what I’ve been up to for the past three months and hopefully I’ll be able to get back to blogging on a regular schedule soon.
Most of my time has been taken up with two new IS Innovation Fund projects I’m running at the University of Edinburgh.
UoE Open Knowledge Network
The UoE Open Knowledge Network is an informal forum to draw together the University’s strategic policies and activities in the area of Open Data, Open Access, Open Education, Open Research, Open Collections and Archives, in order to support cross-fertilisation and promote the institution’s activities in these areas. This Network aims to embed open knowledge within the institution and to establish a self-sustaining network supported by the departments and divisions that have oversight of the University’s strategic Open Access, Open Education and Open Data policies.
The Network held its first event in January which featured a keynote from Gill Hamilton of the National Library of Scotland plus lightning talks from colleagues across the institution.  You can read more about the event on the Open Knowledge network blog here:
UoE Open Knowledge Network, CC BY Stephanie Farley
Accessing Open Research Outputs MOOC
Since the publication of the Finch report and the Research Councils’ policy on open access, universities have increasingly made the outputs of their publicly funded research freely and openly available through open access journals and repositories. However it’s not always easy for people outwith academia to know how to access these outputs even though they are available under open licence.
This project is developing a short self paced learning MOOC aimed at the general public, private researchers, entrepreneurs and SMEs to provide advice on how to access open research outputs including Open Access scholarly works and open research data sets, in order to foster technology transfer and innovation. The course will focus on developing digital and data literacy skills and search strategies to find and access open research outputs and will also feature a series of case studies based on individuals and SMEs that have made successful use of the University of Edinburgh’s world class research outputs.
This is the first time I’ve worked on a MOOC project and I’m delighted to be working with Morna Simpson, of
Geek Girl Scotland
who has just been named one of
Scotland’s most influential women in tech
Wikimedia UK
I’ve been involved in a whole host of Wikimedia events including the
Wikimedia UK Education Summit
at Middlesex University, where Melissa Highton gave an
inspiring keynote
and I chaired a panel of lightning talks,
#1Lib1Ref
which encouraged Librarians and wikimedia editors to add one reference to Wikipedia to mark the 15th anniversary of the foundation of Wikipedia, and the
History of Medicine editathon
, part of the University of Edinburgh’s
Festival of Creative Learning
.  This event was a personal highlight not only because it took place in the stunning
Surgeon’s Hall Museum
and featured an utterly fascinating series of talks on subjects as diverse as
Lothian Health Services Archive
and William Burke, Scotland’s most prolific serial killer, but also because I got to create a new Wikipedia page for
Ethel Moir
, a nurse from Inverness who served on the Eastern Front in WW1.  I’m planning to do some more work on Ethel’s Wikipedia page tomorrow as during the University of Edinburgh’s
Bragging Writes
editathon as part of
International Women’s Day
History of Medicine Editathon, Surgeon’s Hall, CC BY Ewan McAndrew
UNESCO European Consultation on OER
2017 marks the 5th anniversary of the Paris OER Declaration and UNESCO and the Commonwealth for Learning are undertaking an
international consultation
focused on OER for Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education. Since the end of last year I’ve been liaising with COL to ensure that Scotland was represented at this consultation which is being undertaken in advance of the 2nd World OER Congress which will be held in Ljubljana later this year.  Joe Wilson went along to the consultation in Malta represent
Open Scotland
and you can read his report on the event
here
Maritime Masculinities Conference
Way back in December I took a week off from Ed Tech to co-chair the
Maritime Masculinities Conference
at the University of Oxford. The two day conference featured
keynotes
from Prof. Joanne Begiato, Dr Isaac Land and  Dr Mary Conley and a wide range of international papers.  I chaired a panel of papers on the theme of Sexualities and my co-author Heather Noel-Smith and I also presented a paper on
Smoking Chimneys and Fallen Women: the several reinventions of Sir Henry Hart
.  We were pleasantly surprised by the success of the conference and the lovely feedback we got from delegates.
Seconded! One of the most enjoyable, informative and sociable events I've attended. Academic civility in practice. Thank you
#MMasculinities
— Dr Mary O'Neill (@Mary_C_ONeill)
December 20, 2016
I’ve also got a lot of conferences and events coming up over the next couple of months, but I think that deserves a separate blog post!
When I joined the Board of Wikimedia UK earlier this year I was asked if I’d like to write a blog post for the
Wikimedia UK Blog
, this is the result….
Eilean Dhomhnaill, Loch Olabhat by Richard Law, CC BB SA 2.0
Although I’ve worked in open education technology for almost twenty years now, my original background is actually in archaeology.  I studied archaeology at the University of Glasgow in the late 1980s and later worked there as material sciences technician for a number of years. Along the way I worked on some amazing fieldwork projects including excavating Iron Age
brochs
in Orkney and the Outer Hebrides, Bronze Age wetland sites at Flag Fen, a rare Neolithic settlement at Loch Olabhat in
North Uist
, the Roman fort of
Trimontium
at Newstead in the Scottish Borders and prehistoric, Nabatean and Roman sites in the South Hauran desert in Jordan.  I still have a strong interest in both history and archaeology and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m a passionate advocate of opening access to our shared cultural heritage.
Archaeological field work and post excavation analysis generates an enormous volume of data including photographs, plans, notebooks and journals, topographic data, terrain maps, archaeometric data, artefact collections, soil samples, osteoarchaeology data, archaeobotanical data, zooarchaeological data, radio carbon data, etc, etc, etc.  The majority of this data ends up in university, museum and county archives around the country or in specialist archives such as
Historic Environment Scotland
’s
Canmore
archive and the
Archaeology Data Service
(ADS) at the University of York.  And while there is no question that the majority of this data is being carefully curated and archived for posterity, much of it remains largely inaccessible as it is either un-digitised, or released under restrictive or ambiguous licenses.
Cadbury Castle Post Ex c. 1992
This is hardly surprising for older archives which are composed primarily of analogue data.  I worked on the reanalysis of the Cadbury Castle archive in the early 1990’s and can still remember trawling through hundreds of dusty boxes and files of plans, context sheets, finds records, correspondence, notebooks, etc. That reanalysis did result in the publication of an English Heritage
monograph
which is now freely available from the
ADS
but, as far as I’m aware, little if any, of the archive has been digitised.
Digitising the archives of historic excavations may be prohibitively expensive and of debatable value, however much of the data generated by fieldwork now is born digital. Archives such as Canmore and the ADS do an invaluable job of curating this data and making it freely available online for research and educational purposes.  Which is great, but it’s not
really
open.  Both archives use custom licenses rather than the more widely used
Creative Commons licences
.  It feels a bit uncharitable to be
overly critical
of these services because they are at least providing free access to curated archaeological data online.
Other services
restrict
access
to public cultural heritage archives with subscriptions and paywalls.
Several
key thinkers
in the
field of digital humanities
have
warned
of the dangers of enclosing our cultural heritage commons and have stressed the need for digital archives to be open, accessible and reusable.
The
Journal of Open Archaeology Data
is one admirable example of an Open Access scholarly journal that makes all its papers and data sets freely and openly available under Creative Commons licenses, while endorsing the
Panton Principles
and using open, non-proprietary
standards
for all of its content.
Internet Archaeology
is another Open Access journal that publishes all its content under Creative Commons Attribution licences.  However it’s still just a drop in the ocean when one considers the vast quantity of archaeological data generated each year.  Archaeological data is an important component of our cultural commons and if even a small portion of this material was deposited into Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikipedia etc., it would help to significantly increase the sum of open knowledge.
Wikimedia UK is already taking
positive steps
to engage with the Culture sector through a wide range of projects and initiatives such as residencies, editathons, and the
Wiki Loves Monuments
competition, an annual event that encourages both amateur and professional photographers to capture images of the world’s historic monuments.  By engaging with archaeologists and cultural heritage agencies directly, and encouraging them to contribute to our cultural commons, Wikimedia UK can play a key role in helping to ensure that our digital cultural heritage is freely and openly available to all.
This post originally appeared on the
Wikimedia UK Blog
I recently went along to the first meeting of the
Digital Cultural Heritage Research Network
here at the University of Edinburgh. The aim of the network is to
“bring together colleagues from across the University to establish a professional network for researchers investigating digital cultural heritage issues, seeking to include perspectives from diverse disciplines including design, education, sociology, law, cultural studies, informatics and business. Partners from the cultural heritage sector will play a key role in the network as advisors and collaborators.”
About DCHRN
Anyone who follows this blog will know that I have a bit of a thing about opening access to digital cultural resources so I was pleased to be able to contribute a lightning talk on digital cultural heritage and open education. This was one of an eclectic series of lightning talks that covered a wide range of subjects and topics.  I live tweeted the event and Jen Ross has collated tweets from the day in a Storify here:
Digital Cultural Heritage Research Network, Workshop 1
and has also written a recap of the workshop here
Recap of Workshop 1: Cultural Heritage Sparks
My EDINA colleague
Lisa Otty
kicked off the day talking about the
Keepers Extra Project
which aims to highlight the value of the
Keepers Registry
of archiving arrangements for electronic journals. Lisa noted that only 17% of journals are archived in the Keepers Registry and asked the very pertinent question “do we trust publishers with the stewardship of electronic journals?” I think we all know the answer to that question.
I confess I rehashed a previous
presentation
on the comparative dearth of openly license cultural heritage collections in Scotland which allowed me to refer for the millionth time to Andrew Prescott’s classic blog post
Dennis the Paywall Menace stalks the Archives
. This time however I was able to add a couple of pertinent tweets from the
Digging Into Data Round Three Conference
that took place in Glasgow earlier in the week.
One lightning talk that was particularly close to my heart was by
Glyn Davis
who spoke about the openness, or lack thereof, of gallery and museum content, and reflected on his experience of running the
Warhol MOOC
.  Glyn noted that license restrictions often prevent copyright images from being used in online teaching and learning, however many of the students who participated in the Warhol MOOC understood little about copyright restrictions and simply expected to be able to find and reuse images via google, so lots of discussion about open access was required as part of the course.
www.artcastingproject.net
Other highlights included
Jen Ross
‘ talk on
Artcasting
a project which is exploring how digital methods can be used inventively and critically to reimagine complex issues. The project has built an app which engages audiences by allowing them to capture images and decide where to send them in time and space and time, while also retrieving data for evaluation.
Bea Alex
introduced the impressive range of projects from the
Language Technology Group
, including historical text projects, which aim to use text mining to enrich textual metadata with geodata from the
Edinburgh Geo Parser
. Stephen Allen spoke about the MOOC the National Museums of Scotland created to run in parallel with their
Photography – A Victorian Sensation
exhibition.  The museum now hopes to reuse content from future exhibitions for more MOOCs. Rebecca Sinker presented a fascinating keynote on Tate’s research-led approach to digital programming which prompted an interesting discussion on how people engage with art now that so much of it is available online.
Angelica Thumala
spoke all too briefly about her research exploring emotional attachment and experience of books in different modalities, and left us with one of the loveliest quotes of the day
“Books are constant companions, people carry them around and develop physical and emotional attachments to them.”
The workshop ended with four group discussions focussing on issues raised by participants; openness and preservation; participation and interpretation; semantic web and curation; and how can DCHRN create a sustainable interdisciplinary network.  These and other issues will be picked up in the next workshop
Research that matters – playing with method, planning for impact
takes place in March
DCHRN is coordinated by:
Dr Jen Ross, Digital Education
Dr Claire Sowton, Digital Education
Professor Sian Bayne, Digital Education
Professor James Loxley,  Literatures Languages and Culture
Professor Chris Speed, Design Informatics
On a side note, it’s a while since I’ve done a lightning talk and I’d forgotten how difficult it is to put together such a short presentation. Seriously, it took me most of an afternoon to put together a 5 minute talk which really is a bit ridiculous. Seems like I’m not the only one who struggles with short presentations though, when I moaned about this on twitter, a lot of people replied agreeing that the shorter the presentation, the more preparation is required. Martin Weller reminded me of the quote “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”, while Kevin Ashley invoked Jeremy Bentham who was allegedly happy to give a two hour speech on the spot, but a fifteen minute talk required three weeks notice.  I guess I’m with Bentham on that one!
Earlier this week I went along to an event at the National Museum of Scotland run by the University of Edinburgh’s
Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing
group.  There were some fascinating projects and initiatives on display but the highlight of the event was undoubtedly
Erinma Ochu
‘s engaging and thought provoking public lecture on
Crowd Sourcing for Community Development
Erinma Ochu
Erinma outlined the benefits that amateurs can bring to scientific research; they can help to validate data, fill in gaps in data collected by scientists, bring interesting new perspectives and, if they are not overly trained, they may be better able to spot patterns in data that scientists might miss. However Erinma also reminded us of the reciprocal aspects of citizen science. Citizen science should involve scientists serving the community, not just volunteers collecting data for research. It’s important to balance social and scientific value; the community building process is as important as the data product.  We have a responsibility to make spaces in which social inclusion and engagement can happen. I particularly liked Erinma’s focus on citizen science as a learning opportunity;  projects should give something back to the people who contribute the data and help them to learn.  Along the way Erinma introduced some fascinating and inspiring projects including
Turing’s Sunflowers
Farm Hack
and
Manchester City of Science Robot Orchestra
For a more comprehensive overview of Erinma’s talk I’ve created a storify of tweets here:
Crowd Sourcing for Community Development Storify
and Erinma’s slides area available on Slideshare
here
Is there a Library shaped black hole in the web? was the question posed by an OCLC event at the Royal College of Surgeons last week that focused on exploring the potential benefits of using linked data to make library data available to users through the web. For a comprehensive overview of the event, I’ve put together a Storify of tweets here:
Following a truly dreadful pun from Laura J Wilkinson…
We are at the Surgeons' Hall – I'm expecting incisive observations and jokes that will have us in stitches
#oclcld15
— Laura J. Wilkinson (@laurajwilkinson)
October 16, 2015
Owen Stephens
kicked off the event with an overview of linked data and its potential to be  a lingua franca for publishing library data.  Some of the benefits that linked data can afford to libraries including improving search, discovery and display of library catalogue record information, improved data quality and data correction, and the ability to work with experts across the globe to harness their expertise.  Owen also introduced the Open World Assumption which, despite the coincidental title of this blog, was a new concept to me.  The Open World Assumption states that
“there may exist additional data, somewhere in the world to complement the data one has at hand”.
This contrasts with the Closed World Assumption which assumes that
“data sources are well-known and tightly controlled, as in a closed, stand-alone data silo.”
Learning Linked Data
Traditional library catalogues worked on the basis of the closed world assumption, whereas linked data takes an open world approach and recognises that other people will know things you don’t.  Owen quoted
Karen Coyle
“the catalogue should be an information source, not just an inventory” and noted that while data on the web is messy, linked data provides the option to select sources we can trust.
Cathy Dolbear of
Oxford University Press
, gave a very interesting talk from the perspective of a publisher providing data to libraries and other search and discovery services. OUP provides data to library discovery services, search engines, wiki data, and other publishers.  Most OUP products tend to be discovered by search engines, only a small number of referrals, 0.7%, come from library discovery services.  OUP have two OAI-PMH APIs but they are not widely used and they are very keen to learn why.  The publisher’s requirements are primarily driven by search engines, but they would like to hear more from library discovery services.
Neil Jeffries of the
Bodleian Digital Library
was not able to be present on the day, but he overcame the inevitable technical hitches to present remotely.  He began by arguing that digital libraries should not be seen as archives or museums; digital libraries create knowledge and artefacts of intellectual discourse rather than just holding information. In order to enable this knowledge creation, libraries need to collaborate, connect and break down barriers between disciplines.  Neil went on to highlight a wide range of projects and initiatives, including
VIVO
LD4L
CAMELOT
, that use linked data and the semantic web to facilitate these connections. He concluded by encouraging libraries to be proactive and to understand the potential of both data and linked data in their own domain.
Ken Chad
posed a question that often comes up in discussions about linked data and the semantic web; why bother?  What’s the value proposition for linked data?  Gartner currently places linked data in the trough of disillusionment, so how do we cross the chasm to reach the plateau of productivity?  This prompted my colleague Phil Barker to comment:
#oclcld15
…which is great, but I thought Linked data was supposed to be th way of getting RDF/semantic web across chasm & out of trough
— Phil Barker (@philbarker)
October 16, 2015
Ken recommended using the
Jobs-to-be-Done
framework to cross the chasm. Concentrate on users, but rather than just asking them what they want focus on, asking them what they are trying to do and identify their motivating factors – e.g. how will linked data help to boost my research profile?
For those willing to take the leap of faith across the chasm, Gill Hamilton of the
National Library of Scotland
presented a fantastic series of Top Tips! for linked data adoption which can be summarised as follows:
Strings to things
aka
people smart, machines stupid – library databases are full of things, people are really smart at reading things, unfortunately machines are really stupid. Turn things into strings with URIs so machines can read them.
Never, ever,
ever
dumb down your data.
Open up your metadata – license your metadata CC0 and put a representation of it into the
Open Metadata Registry
.  Open metadata is an advert for your collections and enables others to work with you.
Concentrate on what is unique in your collections – one of the unique items from the National Library of Scotland that Gill highlighted was the
order for the Massacre of Glencoe
.  Ahem. Moving swiftly on…
Use open vocabularies.
Simples! Linked Data is still risky though; services go down, URIs get deleted and there’s still more playing around than actual doing, however it’s still worth the risk to help us link up all our knowledge.
Richard J Wallis
brought the day to a close by asking how can libraries exploit the web of data to liberate their data?  The web of data is becoming a web of related entities and it’s the relationships that add value.  Google recognised this early on when they based their search algorithm on the links between resources.  The web now deals with entities and relationships, not static records.
One way to encode these entities and relationships is using
Schema.org
. Schema.org aims to help search engines to interpret information on web pages so that it can be used to improve the display of search results.  Schema.org has two components; an ontology for naming the types and characteristics of resources, their relationships with each other, and constraints on how to describe these characteristics and relationships, and the expression of this information in machine readable formats such as microdata, RDFa Lite and JSON-LD. Richard noted that Schema.org is a form or linked data, but “it doesn’t advertise the fact” and added that libraries need to “give the web what it wants, and what it wants is Schema.org.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about Schema.org, Phil Barker and I wrote a short Cetis Briefing Paper on the specification which is available here:
What is Schema.org?
Richard Wallis will also be presenting a Dublin Core Metadata Initiative webinar on the Schema.org and its applicability to the bibliographic domain on the 18th of November, registration here
ETA
Phil Barker has also written a comprehensive summary of this even over at his own blog ,
Sharing and Learning
, here:
A library shaped black hole in the web?
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