A few years ago I wrote an article for the NCRM newsletter describing some of the collections at the British Library (BL) that might be of interest to social scientists. Since then, the collections have of course grown and changed, and developments in technology and the impact of digital research methods have created new opportunities for using, analysing and interpreting British Library collections. Here I want to point to a few of the newer collections we are building at the British Library as well as show some of the interesting approaches researchers have taken to using historical materials, suggesting that these methods could also be used within the social sciences.
Since 2013, the British Library has been archiving websites with a UK domain name under changes to the legal deposit act. These websites may be viewed onsite within one of the six Legal Deposit Libraries which include the British Library. For researchers of the contemporary world, the harvesting of websites on this mass-scale offers protection against the ephemeral nature of the internet, presenting the opportunity to research cultural, social and political change without interference from the originators of the web-material. Although there are limitations as to what we are able to harvest (for example, nothing behind a pay wall or login is captured) we are excited by the possibilities this rapidly growing set of materials offers the research community.
As the indexing and curation of this collection continues to develop, researchers might be interested in the opportunity for trend analysis using an older version of the UK web archive (1996 -2013). This version of the UK web archive was collected via the Internet Archive and made available via JISC. When triangulated with other data, this resource can add to evidence about social world. One such data source that offers useful possibilities in data triangulation is the Broadcast News service. In May 2010 the British Library began recording television and radio news from 23 free-to-air channels in the UK. These news broadcasts are available to watch and listen in the British Library’s Newsroom (the dedicated News Media Reading Room).
A brilliant feature of this collection for social scientists (especially those who are interested in using methods such as discourse or content analysis) is that a keyword search function is available for those programmes which have subtitles. With the role and democratic function of journalists making news itself, the ability for social researchers to scrutinize what is said by politicians, law-makers and journalists themselves, is as necessary as ever.
Recently, Katrina Navickas (Reader in History, University of Hertfordshire) undertook some innovative research using the British Library’s nineteenth century newspaper collections. Although a historical research project, the methods and subject matter may be relevant to social science researchers, especially to those working across disciplines. The project, the ‘Political Meetings Mapper’ used text-mining and geo-location to find records of where and when Chartist meetings took place using the BL’s digitised newspaper collection. The ‘Political Meetings Mapper’ has mapped over 5000 weekly meetings and lecture tours held by the Chartists between 1841 and 1845 on a resource which shows the spatial and temporal patterns of the movement. This project was one of the two winners of the British Library Labs competition in 2015.
As well as the BL Labs project, the British Library has a team of curators who specialise in applying digital methods and tools to our collections. The Digital Scholarship team has experience of working with academic researchers across the disciplines who are interested in creating new datasets from our collections (as Dr Navickas did) and applying digital research methods to enable new forms of analysis of British Library collections.
With researchers increasingly expecting that content be made available online and offsite, the BL continues to explore ways to make this possible. Enhancing existing digital collections in partnership with others has been one way to add value to the material we hold. For example, some of the maps collections have benefited from a recent geo-referencing project to enable comparison between historical and contemporary maps. The data for this project was added by members of the general public via a crowdsourcing campaign.
A final resource, which has relevance across the disciplines, is the Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS). Many readers will know that the BL works with universities across the UK to provide online access to their PhD theses (both historical and contemporary). Currently there are over 400,000 records available with full-text access to over 170,000. As well as being a useful source of unpublished material for literature reviews, EThOS is increasingly being thought of as a dataset in its own right. For example, the Alzheimer’s Society appointed RAND Europe to produce a report on the state of dementia research in the UK. RAND was able to work with the British Library to produce a bespoke list of PhD theses related to dementia, showing recent trends in dementia research.
For more information about our contemporary collections and projects mentioned here, please do visit our home page and blogs. And of course, visit the Library itself, to find ways to add value to your own research.