THE BRITISH LIBRARY AND BRITISH HISTORY ONLINE: ACTUALITY AND PROSPECTS: THE BRITISH LIBRARY AND BRITISH HISTORY ONLINE: ACTUALITY AND PROSPECTS Dr Clive Field Director of Scholarship and Collections The British Library


OVERVIEW: OVERVIEW Profile of the British Library Resource Discovery Born-Digital Content Digitisation Digital Scholarship


PROFILE OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY: PROFILE OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY British Library Act 1972 - commenced 1973 Merger of British Museum Library (1753) and six other institutions 2.6 million items per annum consulted in reading rooms 2.8 million remote supply items per annum 408,000 reading room visits in 2002/3 57,000 new reader passes issued per annum 150 million collection items 2.5 million items or 12 km added each year Annual acquisition fund of £14 million plus value of legal deposit


RESOURCE DISCOVERY (1): RESOURCE DISCOVERY (1) Books British Library Public Catalogue (8.5 million searches per annum, soon to be replaced as part of Integrated Library System) - http://blpc.bl.uk Interoperability with COPAC - http://www.copac.ac.uk British National Bibliography from 1950 - http://www.bl.uk/services/bibliographic/natbib.html English Short Title Catalogue (online and CD-ROM) - http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/ holdingenglish.html


RESOURCE DISCOVERY (2): RESOURCE DISCOVERY (2) Serials Serials Union Catalogue (SUNCAT) - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub02/suncat_itt.html/ ZETOC - http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk Other Materials Western Manuscripts - http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts.html India Office - http://prodigi.bl.uk/iosm/index.asp Sound - http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/sound.html Bindings - http://prodigi.bl.uk/bindings/index.asp


RESOURCE DISCOVERY (3): RESOURCE DISCOVERY (3) Retrospective Conversion and Retrospective Cataloguing Rolling programme to convert remaining third of collection items not in computerised catalogues British Library leadership of Full Disclosure - http://www.bl.uk/concord/fulldisc-about.html


DIGITISATION (1): DIGITISATION (1) Books Early English Books Online - EEBO (commercial), 22 million pages, linked to Text Creation Partnership - http://www.umi.com/products/pt-product-EEBO.shtml Eighteenth Century Collections Online - ECCO (commercial), 33 million text searchable pages - http://www.galegroup.com/EighteenthCentury/email/ecco.htm?pr=Home Smaller projects, for example first and second editions of Canterbury Tales, Renaissance Festival Books, Shakespeare Quartos


DIGITISATION (2): DIGITISATION (2) Newspapers Online newspaper archive pilot site - www.uk.olivesoftware.com Burney Newspapers (NSF-funded) - over one million page images with searchable text Pre-1930 newspapers (HEFCE-funded) - likely two million page images with searchable text Images Images Online - http://ibs001.colo.firstnet.net.uk/ britishlibrary/index.jsp


DIGITISATION (3): DIGITISATION (3) Multimedia Sound (HEFCE-funded) - estimated 4,000 hours of recordings of oral history and other sound sources Collect Britain (NOF-funded) - 100,000 objects - http://www.bl.uk/collectbritain Moving Here (NOF-funded, National Archives-led) - http://www.movinghere.org.uk


BORN-DIGITAL CONTENT (1): BORN-DIGITAL CONTENT (1) Purchasing and licensing of UK and overseas commercial publications - http://www.bl.uk/collections/wider/elecsuboff.html and http://www.bl.uk/collections/wider/ elecjournalsub/elecjournalsub.html Extending legal deposit of UK publications to non-print media by voluntary schemes (sound and offline media) and through intended legislation (Legal Deposit Libraries Bill) - http://www.bl.uk/cgi-bin/news.cgi?story=1346 Ordnance Survey Land-Line Plus digital map data


BORN-DIGITAL CONTENT (2): BORN-DIGITAL CONTENT (2) Commencing Britain on the Web archiving programme, in consultation with national (National Archives, JISC, Wellcome etc.) and international (other national libraries, Internet Archive) partners, and building upon British Library 2001/2 Domain.UK pilot Developing institutional repositories through participation in the SHERPA project - http://www.sherpa.ac.uk Collecting e-manuscripts - for example, Bill Hamilton Archive project, in partnership with Science Museum and University of London Computer Centre, comprising extensive electronic data and correspondence utilising obsolete computers, storage media and software


DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP (1): DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP (1) Publications Electronic British Library Journal - http://www.bl.uk/collections/eblj/eblj.html Electronic Beowulf , a partnership with University of Kentucky, CD-ROM - ISBN 0 7123 0494 0 Virtual exhibitions The Lindisfarne Gospels Tour - http://www.bl.uk/ whatson/exhibitions/lindisfarne/tour.html Trading places: the East India Company and Asia - http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/trading/home.html


DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP (2): DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP (2) Aspects of the Victorian book - http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/intro.html Digital projects Inhouse, underpinned by twenty-first-century curatorship programme - http://www.bl.uk/ collections/researchregister/search.html Collaborative, with UK higher education partners and New York Public Library