The Sloane Lab: Looking back to build future shared collections
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Information Studies
Abstract
How can museums, libraries, archives and galleries (GLAMs) use digital technology to link their collections together in ways that make it easier for different people, both specialists and interested publics, to find the information they want? How can digital technology help us tell new stories about what can be rediscovered, and reimagined, by linking collections? How can we make specialist users and members of the public more aware of the contested nature and histories of museum collections? What is the role of digital tools in foregrounding overlooked or hidden processes, like imperialism, colonialism, the slave trade, loss and destruction, that have shaped the national collection? Who gets to contribute to, and shape, research on how memory institutions can reach across their institutional boundaries, subject-specialities and even countries so as to better engage their varied audiences? And how can heritage institutions select the most useful technologies from the many that are available for digitizing, releasing and interlinking their collections?
The founding collection of the British Museum is a rich area to explore these challenges, which are ones that many organizations face. This is because the Museum's original 1753 founding collection of Sir Hans Sloane is now split across three different institutions (the British Museum (BM), Natural History Museum (NHM) and the British Library (BL)) and the digital information that describes this founding collections sits in the different institutions in a range of different systems that are not currently set up to talk to one another. By focusing on catalogue records, and the vast, remaining collections of Sir Hans Sloane, this project will work with interested communities and heritage organisations to link the present with the past so as to allow the currently broken links between Sloane's collections and catalogues to be re-established across the NHM, BL, BM (plus others that have relevant material). The main outcome of our project will be a freely available, online digital lab (the Sloane Lab) that will offer researchers, curators and interested publics new opportunities to search, explore, and critically and creatively use and reuse digital cultural heritage. Crucially, we will involve a broad community of interested users in our future-making research on the national collection. We will invite expert and interested publics to contribute to all stages of the planning, research and implementation of our project through e.g. questionnaires, focus groups and interviews. One of the most exciting aspects of our participatory approach will be the 10 Community Fellows we will appoint through an open call. They will be given the funds and technical assistance they require to undertake a creative, research-led or practice-based project on the national collection using the Sloane Lab. Along with a dedicated traveling exhibition, and changes to the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery, we will also support other memory institutions in the UK and internationally by releasing our code, tools and recommendations. Following ongoing consultation with them we will develop tailored demonstrators and recommendations that can facilitate their participation in the digital national collection. This project has the potential to allow the currently disjointed national collection to be interlinked, searched and researched in new ways that do not seek to hide or omit the contested nature of these collections. In doing so it will show that all "curious and interested persons", and not just curators, computer scientists and digital humanists, have important contributions to make to the future national collection.
The founding collection of the British Museum is a rich area to explore these challenges, which are ones that many organizations face. This is because the Museum's original 1753 founding collection of Sir Hans Sloane is now split across three different institutions (the British Museum (BM), Natural History Museum (NHM) and the British Library (BL)) and the digital information that describes this founding collections sits in the different institutions in a range of different systems that are not currently set up to talk to one another. By focusing on catalogue records, and the vast, remaining collections of Sir Hans Sloane, this project will work with interested communities and heritage organisations to link the present with the past so as to allow the currently broken links between Sloane's collections and catalogues to be re-established across the NHM, BL, BM (plus others that have relevant material). The main outcome of our project will be a freely available, online digital lab (the Sloane Lab) that will offer researchers, curators and interested publics new opportunities to search, explore, and critically and creatively use and reuse digital cultural heritage. Crucially, we will involve a broad community of interested users in our future-making research on the national collection. We will invite expert and interested publics to contribute to all stages of the planning, research and implementation of our project through e.g. questionnaires, focus groups and interviews. One of the most exciting aspects of our participatory approach will be the 10 Community Fellows we will appoint through an open call. They will be given the funds and technical assistance they require to undertake a creative, research-led or practice-based project on the national collection using the Sloane Lab. Along with a dedicated traveling exhibition, and changes to the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery, we will also support other memory institutions in the UK and internationally by releasing our code, tools and recommendations. Following ongoing consultation with them we will develop tailored demonstrators and recommendations that can facilitate their participation in the digital national collection. This project has the potential to allow the currently disjointed national collection to be interlinked, searched and researched in new ways that do not seek to hide or omit the contested nature of these collections. In doing so it will show that all "curious and interested persons", and not just curators, computer scientists and digital humanists, have important contributions to make to the future national collection.
Organisations
- University College London (Lead Research Organisation)
- Archives and Records Association (Project Partner)
- Down County Museum (Project Partner)
- Collecting the West (Project Partner)
- National Galleries of Scotland (Project Partner)
- University of Oxford (Project Partner)
- British Library (Project Partner)
- Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (Project Partner)
- National Museums Scotland (Project Partner)
- Historic Environment Scotland (Project Partner)
Publications
Humbel M
(2021)
Named-entity recognition for early modern textual documents: a review of capabilities and challenges with strategies for the future
in Journal of Documentation
Sloan K
(2022)
Collective Wisdom - Collecting in the Early Modern Academy
| Title | Sloane Lab Parser and Triplifier |
| Description | The Sloane Lab Parser and Triplifier is the component of the Sloane Lab architecture that takes as input the datasets collected from the data sources, extracts the data, and converts it into a representation that is compatible with the Sloane Lab Knowledge Base. The tool supports the TEI-XML format that has been used to annotate historical catalogues, the Darwin Core format used by the Natural History Museum, and it is being updated to support the proprietary format used by the British Museum. The tool is written in Python. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The Sloane Lab Parser and Triplifier allows the project to ingest data into the Knowledge Base. The code will be published in an open source repository and may have further impact on similar projects that either use data from the same sources or in the same formats (e.g., TEI-XML, Darwin Core, or British Museum data). The tool is easily extensible to support additional formats. |
| Title | The data atlas of the Sloane Lab |
| Description | The aim of the data atlas is to gather relevant information about catalogues and datasets for charting the resources that potentially can be integrated into the Sloane Lab knowledge base. This is the first 'Alpha' version of the data atlas that identifies a core set of data resources suitable for integration. In this version, the following datasets and resources are documented: a digital edition of MS 3972c Vol VI, Sloane's catalogue of books and printed ephemera a digital edition of Sloane MS 3972b of folios listing manuscript material removed from 3972c a digital edition of sir Hans Sloane's catalogues of miscellanies, antiquities, seals, pictures, mathematical instruments, agate handles, agate cups, bottles, spoons a digital edition of sir Hans Sloane's catalogue of fossils including coralls, serpents, echini, crustacea, starrfishes, humana, (volume I) a digital edition of sir Hans Sloane's catalogue of fossils including fishes, birds, eggs, quadrupeds (volume v) specimens from Sloane's voyage to Jamaica - Sloane herbarium John Ray's Historia plantarum, Sloane's personal copy British museum collection online British library Sloane printed books catalogue British library catalogue of Sloane manuscripts Draft minutes of royal society during time Sloane was secretary 26 Sloane letters project |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The benefit for creating the atlas is bifold; a) help to realise the breadth and availability of resources and b) help to identify their current state and format so to design appropriate data mapping and ingestion approaches. To create the atlas, we devise a rubric for data collection that can be used as the assessment tool to enable consistent review and recording of characteristics and attributes of datasets and catalogues. The methodology of the "The Atlas of Digitised Newspapers" project informs our data collection process to a certain degree without going into the technical details of metadata mappings which is outside the scope of this task. The rubric collects information about type of data, origin, volume, metadata availability and other technical and interpretive definitions. More specifically the rubric should gather information about; background, composition and structure, data quality, digitization stage, metadata schema (, availability and accessibility (in term of download areas, API, etc) and right and usage. The finding should be compiled into single document which can form a dissemination outcome of the project. |
| Title | Sloane Lab Data Model |
| Description | The Sloane Lab Data Model allows us to represent all data collected in the project. The Data Model is based on Semantic Web technologies (RDF/S, OWL) and built on top of the CIDOC CRM reference model. The central entity in the Data Model is the Information Object, which models the record or catalogue entry describing a specific object. The model was built with the goal of allowing the representation of different perspectives on the same object, i.e., the "multivocality" of the collection. The model is general enough to model many different kinds of objects and records about them, but also detailed enough to allow users to make complex queries on the collection. |
| Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The main impact of the Sloane Lab Data Model is to enable the representation of all the data collected in the Sloane Lab Knowledge Base, allowing users to query the data in complex and powerful ways. The Data Model allows the project to link together many different datasets, which are currently in different and incompatible formats. The use of Semantic Web technologies makes the Data model easily reusable by other projects that have similar goals or face similar issues as the Sloane Lab. |
| Title | Sloane Lab Knowledge Base |
| Description | The Sloane Lab Knowledge Base is the repository where all the data collected in the project is stored. The Knowledge Base is built as a triple store, using the GraphDB software. The data is modelled using the Sloane Lab Data Model and ingested from each data source through a separate tool, the Sloane Lab Parser and Triplifier. The Knowledge Base provides APIs for querying the data using the SPARQL query language. At present, the knowledge base contains more than 140,000 RDF statements. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The Sloane Lab Knowledge Base will directly allow the construction of complex tools to explore, query and visualise the data. The data itself will be published as open data, following the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reuse), so that it can easily be reused by future projects. The use of Semantic Web technologies also allows external projects and knowledge bases to directly link to individual entities in the Sloane Lab Knowledge Base, as each of them will be provided with a persistent identifier. |
| Title | Sloane Lab system architecture model |
| Description | The system architecture model presents the software packages and web services which were installed and deployed throughout the development stage. It also shows the core infrastructure's components that host, integrate, and permit secure access to the Sloan Lab digital tools and applications. The infrastructure environment is built based on cloud services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. The system architecture is structured in a way where applications and services are decoupled and deployed in separate layers. At any given point the data workflow can be deconstructed and re-integrated with different platforms or technologies. |
| Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The model was designed to benefit from cloud services in order to address the technical and infrastructural requirements of the Sloane Lab and similar projects. These requirements include but not limited to data mobilisation, knowledge base management, data aggregation, serialisation, and dissemination. Decoupling services and application from the hosting platform leads to deliver sustainable applications and preserving the aggregated historical collections beyond the current period of funding. |
| URL | https://sloanelab.org/system-architecture/ |
| Description | Alan Turing Humanities and data science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The research aims and technical approaches of the Sloane Lab have been discussed in the Alan Turing humanities and data science group by Andreas Vlachidis during the January meeting (Thursday 13 January). Members of the group are academics, researchers, scholars and PhD students from a wide range of national institutions. Many other group members such as Jane Winters, Willcox, and Fraser Sturt are involved in TaNC discovery projects. During the discussion, the member highlighted common approaches to research and challenges faced during recruitment. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Bridging worlds: collaborative case studies in technology and art collections at UCL, presented at TRAN(S)MISSIONS by Nina Pearlman, Talk (Jan 2023) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented Sloane Lab in the context of UCL case studies where collections meet technology at TRAN(S)MISSIONS | how multimediality shapes interdisciplinary research in the field of Italian and Visual Culture Studies 3rd edition. Winter School. 10-15 January 2023, Università degli Studi di Roma Tre in collaboration with University College London. The Winter School is open to students and researchers, artists, curators, library science specialists, engineers, technicians-archivists who conduct interdisciplinary studies in the field of Italian and Cultural Studies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.uniroma3.it/en/articoli/transmissions-3rd-edition-winter-school-316624/ |
| Description | Communicating Colonial Legacies Workshop May 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A half day workshop organised by TaNC and hosted by the Sloane Lab. The workshop allowed the project team to engage with fellow Discovery Project teams and learnt about how to respond to the media, public and other engagements. It was a useful workshop for both the project team and other participants. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Connecting Jamaican plants across Sloane Collections Participatory Workshop (Dec 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Workshop to identify what expert users might want to do with data from various Sloane's datasets & explore the interoperability of the Sloane Lab database with external digital collections using a selection of specimen from Sloane's Voyage to Jamaica. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Deborah Leem, Andreas Vlachidis, Prof Julianne Nyhan (PI) - Presented at The Digital Humanities Congress Sep 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The Digital Humanities Congress is a conference hosted by the DHI at the University of Sheffield every two years. Its purpose is to promote the sharing of knowledge, ideas and techniques within the digital humanities. The PI of Sloane Lab among other colleagues presented paper 'Sir Han Slone's Information Architecture: From TEI to CSV for Data Analysis.' The paper has the potential benefits of contributing to the Collections as Data movement and adds value to data driven humanities research by showcasing how new knowledge and insights have risen from the use of digital methods in the context of Early Modern documents. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.dhi.ac.uk/dhc/2022/paper/195 |
| Description | Disciplinarily and the early-modern herbarium - A one-day research workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Mark Carine (Co-I, NHM) was among one of the organisers of this workshop. He introduced the Sloane Lab and raised awareness of the project to a community of interest of the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Dr Mark Carine presented at Bauhin Conference 2022 at University of Basel (Sep 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Co-I Dr Mark Carine presented at 'Documenting, understanding and opening the botanical collections of Hans Sloane (1660-1753)' at the conference. He also served as one of the Scientific Committee members for the conference. There were about 100 participants at the conferences. The conference helped to raise awareness of the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://herbarium.unibas.ch/en/bauhin2022/program/ |
| Description | Jeremy Hill (Co-I) and BM Head of National Programmes travelled to Downpatrick in N. Ireland to meet with Down County Museum CEO and other staff for travel exhibition planning. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | The visit/event allowed better understand of the local communities which helped with the future participatory and engagement activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Meeting with Australian Project Partner, Collecting the West Apr 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Meeting with Project Partner, Collecting the West. Following a brief overview of both the technical and participatory methods of SL, the group discussed the possible knowledge exchange areas; including overlaps of the 2 projects on how to handle/aggregate data, and experience on community engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Meeting with BM & NHM colleagues to discuss of participatory engagement Feb 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | It was a productive meeting with attendees include NHM UX Manager, BM Community Engagement Consultant and BM Head of National Programmes. They are employees from the Collaborators who shared valuable experience on engagements and participatory research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Meeting with Down County Museum Curator and CEO/Founder of Sir Hans Sloane Centre Jan 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | The Sloane Lab team (Julianne Nyhan, Kim Sloane, Hanna James, Jeremy Hill and other British Museum staff members) met with Down County Museum Curator and CEO/Founder of Sir Hans Sloane Centre in Jan 2022. with the The discussions explored the scope of the collaborations and the role for Down County Museum and Sir Hans Sloane Centre in the touring exhibition. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Meeting with The Royal Society October 2021 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | To discuss the AHRC TaNC Sloane lab with the Royal Society and catch up with where they are with their digitisation programme. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Meeting with project partners and advisory board |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Meeting with project partners (cultural heritage organisations) and the advisory board members to introduce the Sloane Lab and opportunities for collaboration and exchange. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | NHM PDRA Victoria Pickering presented at the Conference for the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) Posters Session (June 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The presentation by Dr Victoria Pickering had reached a big audience of about 450 participants (in person and virtual attendees) with international reach. It helped to raise awareness of the project with a range of audience. The conference also aimed to increase use of the collections. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/6593608#.Y6H5yIfP2bh |
| Description | PDRA, Victoria Pickering gave Short talk at NHM's monthly Collections and Culture Research theme meeting (Jul 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Every month the NHM's research themes meet to share projects and research and this short talk was a chance to introduce the Sloane Lab to our NHM colleagues. The talk had resulted in requests for further information about the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Panel discussion at the EdTechX summit in London (Dr Nina Pearlman) June 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The panel discussion explores new trends at the intersection of education and Tech especially with respect to VR/AR and the metaverse. Nina invited to bring a museum perspective about where education meets museum/collection meets VR on the back of a knowledge exchange project funded by Higher Education Innovation Fund with UCL CASA and AI startup Kagenova that has developed next generation 360VR technology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://edtechxeurope.com/ |
| Description | Prof Julianne Nyhan (PI) - closing keynote speaker at Digital Humanities Summer School at Oxford - DHOxSS2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | PI Julianne Nyhan presented keynote at Keble College Oxford. "Thinking through the place of absence in the grand challenges of the Digital Humanities and Humanities Data Science". Attendance: more than 50 with students and DH scholars. The presentation has raised awareness of the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Schöne Lecture by Prof Julianne Nyhan at TU Berlin (Nov 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Prof. Julianne Nyhan gave the Der Schöne-Vortrag, titled 'Mind the Gap: Data absence, data silence, and data bias' on 14th November 2022 at The Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin). The Schöne lecture is a collaboration between TU Berlin and the Richard Schöne Gesellschaft für Museumsgeschichte e.V. The lecture had helped to raise the profile of the Sloane Lab in Continental Europe. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://nachrichten.idw-online.de/2022/11/03/tu-berlin-digitalisierung-von-sammlungen-fehlende-daten... |
| Description | Sloane Lab Co-I, Dr Nina Pearlman gave a presentation about Sloane Lab and UCL Art Collections for University of East London (Sep 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Sloane Lab Co-I, Dr Nina Pearlman gave a presentation about Sloane Lab as part of a 40min presentation about UCL Art Collections for University of East London. 'Research into Practice: Contemporary Practice'. The session is about private and public collections. They have talks from different collections, including for example Theresa Roberts Collection - contemporary art from Jamaica. The presentation helps to reach out to Fine Arts students about the project and the use Data as Collections. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Sloane Lab Newsletter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The purpose of the newsletter is to provide updates and progresses of the project. The target audiences are the stakeholders, communities or individuals who are interested in the project. So far the project team have published 6 issues of the newsletters with over 110 subscribers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Sloane Lab Participatory Workshop (December 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Participatory workshop with 14 participants included professional practitioners including botanists and historians. The activities aimed to contribute to the co-designing of the Sloane Lab. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Sloane Lab Participatory event at 'Explorers Family Festival: The Nature of the Caribbean Islands at the Natural History Museum (October 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dr Alda Tarracciano (Participatory Design & Community Engagement Consultant) and Marco Humbel (Participatory Research and Collections as Data) held a digital jam session during the Explorers Family Festival: The Nature of the Caribbean Islands at the Natural History Museum on 23rd October 2022. Using a selection of plants included in "Specimens from Sloane's Voyage to Jamaica" and available in the NHM Sir Hans Sloane Herbarium, the team designed activities to better understand how the Sloane Lab could help to widen access to the Herbarium and the kind of knowledge might interest users when searching the online collections. The activities had attracted participants from a variety of professional, cultural, and geographical backgrounds. Participants showed interest in the botanical collections and issues related to digital collections and access. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.nhm.ac.uk/events/explorers-family-festival-nature-of-the-caribbean-islands.html |
| Description | Sloane Lab focus group/workshop at MTSR 2022 Conference (Nov 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | As part of the MTSR 2022 programme, the team conducted a 3 hr focus group/workshop for participants to explore a sample of the Sloane Lab datasets, reflect on technical issues faced in the project, and apply their own systems/tools to the data by working on three technical challenges. These were followed by a discussion on the outcomes of the activities, including strategies and digital tools employed by participants, and potential enhancements of the Sloane Lab data management system. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.nhm.ac.uk/events/explorers-family-festival-nature-of-the-caribbean-islands.html |
| Description | Sloane Lab team met with British Library curators Mar 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Sloane Lab team met with British Library curators to discuss how BL could support the Sloane Lab project, also the areas of involvement. The various BL curator also gave overviews on the the Sloane materials housing in British Library, and some technical practicalities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Sloane Lab team presented at 6th European Conference on Social Networks (Sep 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The Sloane Lab team (Daniele Metilli; Andreas Vlachidis; Marco Humbel; Victoria Pickering; Mark Carine; Kim Sloan; Julianne Nyhan), presented paper 'Towards a network analysis of Hans Sloane's collection: A preliminary study' at 6th European Conference on Social Networks 12-16 September 2022 in University of Greenwich, London, UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.insna.org/events/6th-european-conference-on-social-networks |
| Description | TaNC workshop at Science Museum (Feb 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The first TaNC workshop focus on sharing of Technological Approaches and Engagement activities among the Discovery Projects, as well as other workshop attendees including other academics and publishers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | The Society for the History of Collections Seminar 'New Perspectives on Hans Sloane' Jan 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The second part of the workshop (27th January 2022) was chaired by Prof Julianne Nyhan. Doctoral and early career researchers will share their research from across Sloane's collections, discussing particular objects as well as Sloane's position in wider collecting cultures and networks. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://societyhistorycollecting.org/news-and-events/ecr-phd-workshop-new-perspectives-on-hans-sloan... |
| Description | Universeum 2022 (Belgium) - Poster section presentation (Jul 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The project team presented conference paper at Universeum 2022 (posted section). Paper title: Interrogating collections' contested and challenging past through the SLOANE (GLAM) LAB (J. Nyhan; A. Vlachidis, A. Flinn; N. Pearlman, M. Humbel, D. Metilli, J. Sadek, F. Valeonti, M. Carine, V. Pickering & A. Terracciano). The conference had over 100 participants (in-person + virtual). Since the conference, the team had networked with other museums and professional practitioners. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://universeum2022.be/ |
| Description | Universität Bern - Digitality/Digital Culture(s) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This lecture will present an introduction to some of the big questions to be grappled with during our AHRC towards a National Collection-funded project entitled 'The Sloane Lab: Looking back to build future shared collections' (2021-24). Our project will aim to devise automated and augmented ways, of mending the broken links between the past and present of the UK's founding collection in the catalogues of the British Museum, Natural History Museum and the British Library. For this, we will use the collection of Hans Sloane (1660-1753) as a microcosm through which to explore the technical, infrastructural, conceptual, historical and social challenges faced in bringing together digital cultural heritage collections so as to help audiences use, learn and benefit from them. A key aim of the project is to facilitate richer, more critical understandings of the origins and development of museum collections by devising computational and conceptual approaches to the detection and exposition of often-hidden processes like colonialism, empire and slavery that have shaped collections and their classifications. Sloane's collection was created through the economic, political and culture processes of Britain's increasing global entanglements of the 17/18th century, to which the infrastructure for a 21st-century national collection must respond. The project will explore how we might develop new computational approaches to the detection and visualization of loss, absence and bias, so as to help publics, researchers and cultural heritage organisations to shape and engage with digital technologies in new ways. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.gsah.unibe.ch/doctoral_programs/interdisciplinary_cultural_studies_ics/events/digitality... |
| Description | Webinars for the Research Institute for Collections (Dr Nina Pearlman) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | UCL LCCOS launched a Research Institute for Collections (RIC) and this presentation introduced the institute to the UCL teams whose work relates to the mission of RIC. Sloane Lab Co-I Dr Nina Pearlman, Head of UCL Art Collections, presented the Sloane Lab as an example collaborative research and research funding the institute seeks to support, attract and disseminate. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Who Holds the Data? Connecting Cultivated Plants to Specimens in the Sloane Lab Participatory Workshop (Feb 2023) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Consultation with representatives from the Heritage Seed Library to co-produce a workshop with members of community heritage organisations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Year 1 Advisory Board Meeting (May 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Apart from reporting the latest developments of the various work package, the project team hoped to benefit from the expertise and experience of the Advisory board in connection with a number of questions that have arisen in the course of their work so far. They invited discussions from the Board in response to questions from the team such as best practice in the integration of disparate data sets, and network to include the voices of small heritage organisations and non-hegemonic communities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |