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.
 
Title Annotation Workflow on Zooniverse for validating mobilised data 
Description Sloane Lab has a project hosted on Zooniverse platform which allows experts to delve into the data mobilised from the Historia Plantarum book and evaluate its quality. Within this workflow every digital image of the Historia plantarum is displayed where plant names and their associated side margins which is identified by the data mobilisation service are highlighted with red boxes. Trained and expert reviewers examine the highlighted elements using the online interface provided by Zooniverse to ensuring their accuracy. If they notice any plant name that is absent, they use the interface to outline it for inclusion into the data set. The interface enhanced with detailed tutorial providing task instructions. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact By examining every plant name retrieved through the automatic data mobilisation web service, we guarantee precision and enhance the overall quality of the data. Additionally, we have thoroughly documented the workflow tutorial and will provide detailed reports on the annotation process, enabling other researchers facing similar challenges to derive valuable insights from our findings. 
 
Title Formal Extensions to CIDOC-CRM - Standard for Cultural Heritage Data Modeling 
Description The technical team has made significant progress in advancing technology, particularly in the areas of modelling, enriching, and aggregating cultural heritage data. For the first time, we have successfully integrated the historical manuscript catalogues with the contemporary database catalogues of the Sloane collection into a unified data representation and query framework. Moreover, we have introduced sophisticated data modelling techniques by adopting ISO standard models from the CIDOC-CRM family. These techniques include formal extensions to the model, specifically designed to address uncertainties and gaps within the datasets. We have developed a comprehensive methodology designed to navigate and interpret the complexities of cultural heritage (CH) collections that span multiple institutions and digitisation efforts, featuring data with multi-layered representations. When it comes to data modelling, due to the different data formats and models for each institution we needed to develop a single data model to support every dataset, and this proved to be a significant challenge that required extensive discussions with the partner institutions. We have developed the following modelling approaches and extensions. A historical catalogue is a set of catalogue entries describing a collection of physical objects. We view the digitised catalogue as an information object (E73), and model it in the same way as the contemporary record. We separately model the original catalogue as an information object (E73) and state that the digitised catalogue incorporates (P167) the information found in the original one. We view the individual catalogue entry as a digital object (D1 from the CRMdig model). Each record or entry may refer to one or more people (E21), places (E53), materials (E57), techniques (E29 Design or Procedure), or other entities that are associated to the object. We view each of these references as an individual part of the record/entry that we call catalogue item (Sloane Lab SL1). Each catalogue item has a specific type and is about one or more entities of this type. For example, a field called "Material" will refer to the material the object is made of, and it will list one or more specific materials. Each catalogue item may also have a confidence level (to represent uncertainty), and possibly a note attached to it. The property SL10 has specific type also allows us to represent a specific association, e.g., that a person was the field collector. The catalogue item links to the specific entity through SL11 is specifically about, while the confidence (or uncertainty) is expressed through SL12 has confidence degree. Multiple records (or entries) can be linked to each other when they refer to the same physical object or when they mention the same entities (people, places, etc.). However, linking through the physical object is problematic because many physical objects have not been preserved, and in some cases the connection is uncertain. For these reasons, instead of going through the physical object, we have decided to link the records (or entries) through the identifier (E42). For example, a contemporary record may refer to (P67) the identifier "SLMisc-1368", which is the preferred identifier (P48) of the entry 1368 in the Miscellanies historical catalogue. In many cases, two records (or entries) will mention the same entity, sometimes in different ways. For example, the historical catalogue entry Miscellanies 1368 mentions a person called "Mr. Clerk", while the British Museum record for the corresponding object mentions "Clerk" as the field collector. When we have multiple mentions of the same person (or place, or material, etc.), we need to create multiple entities corresponding to each person, and then state that they are the same. In many cases, these connections have already been identified either by Enlightenment Architectures or by the partner institutions (e.g., British Museum entity BIOG122215 is linked to three different objects). But in other cases, the identity will be uncertain. Two entities that are believed to be the same can be linked together through the property SL16 believed to be the same as. This allows us to state that the two mentions (are likely to) refer to the same person without relying on a stronger identity relation such as owl:sameAs. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Instead of defining an entirely new data model, we opted to rely on the CIDOC CRM to achieve interoperability with previous and future projects based on this widely adopted standard. At the same time, we build on the existing CIDOC CRM semantics by extending it with new classes and properties that are tailored to our specific requirements (for example, to represent uncertainties within the datasets). In this way, we can overcome some of the current limitations of CIDOC CRM while still remaining compliant with established standards. By adopting the CIDOC CRM and following the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) when publishing our knowledge base, we ensure that the collected data can be easily accessed and reused by future projects. 
 
Title Methods for Addressing the Semantics of Uncertainties and Absences 
Description The project has developed methods for addressing uncertainty within a knowledge base. Both historical and contemporary cultural heritage records contain uncertain data, which is marked in different ways by different institutions. Uncertainty is difficult to represent in a digital environment and there are no relevant standards for cultural heritage datasets. In the Sloane Lab, we have developed a methodology for automatically recognising uncertainties when parsing the datasets, and then assigning a degree of confidence to each claim that is made in the record. For example, if a record states that a certain British Museum object was collected by a Mr. Clerk, but there is a question mark in the association field denoting uncertainty, this will be stored in the Sloane Lab knowledge base as a catalogue item with confidence level "uncertain" (using the property SL12 has confidence degree). We also allow for uncertain identification of same-as relations through the property SL16 believed to be the same as. At the same time, we have also been working on methods for identifying different types of data absences in the datasets, for example objects that are not preserved, or provenance information that is missing. We store this data and display it in the knowledge base through specific queries and visualisations that provide to the user a high-level view of absences and uncertainties within the datasets. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The methods we developed have allowed the Sloane Lab to provide a nuanced view of the uncertainties and absences found in the datasets, allowing for a better understanding of the limitations inherent in cultural heritage datasets by the users of the Sloane Lab knowledge base. The visualisations which are embedded in the knowledge base allow users to explore the absences and uncertainties of the collection through a web-based and interactive interface. The methodology and tools can potentially be reused by other projects facing the same issues. 
 
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 Method for Cultural Heritage Data 
Description The Atlas is created out of a specific project's need for data across the different datasets to be standardised to be able to make meaningful connections. The latest version achieved a comprehensive visualisation of all the metadata fields and a set of mappings of interrelations of the metadata across datasets. The aim is to map out resources that could potentially be integrated into the Sloane Lab's knowledge base. This process allows us to define the scope and accessibility of these resources and identify their digitisation status and format, enabling us to design suitable data mapping and ingestion methods. Furthermore, our objective is to provide a methodological abstraction, particularly valuable to the field of DH, to support future projects in managing and comprehending complex landscapes of collections dispersed across, various institutions and systems of varying accessibility status. Our Data Atlas method contains the following stages Multidisciplinary Team The pivotal role and significance of multidisciplinary team in the development of a Data Atlas is recognised as integral to its successful creation, whether it serves as a tool for data collection, or as a comprehensive framework for system integration, mapping, and resource organisation Atlas Metaphor The creation of an atlas is intertwined with the notion of an all-encompassing and comprehensive representation of a world. Inventory The effectiveness of a data atlas in providing an all-encompassing representation that is easy to comprehend and navigate is fundamental for inspecting complex and extended data landscapes Analysis and Exploration A fundamental aim of the Data Atlas is to create a user-friendly and intuitively navigable representation that enables swift exploration and analysis of collections and their attributes. Data Atlas Taxonomy At the core of Data Atlas lies the organisation of a diverse range of resource types and items, each having distinct forms, sizes, purposes, and granularity levels 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The benefits of the Data Atlas are numerous. This is the first time that the contemporary data landscape of Sloane's collections have been brought together across institutions and digital projects. In doing this, the Atlas provides a clear picture of the breadth and availability of physical and digital data related to the project across all the relevant resources. Developed early in the project, the Sloane Lab team has already experienced at first hand the benefits of this. A key example is the tool's enabling of a shared understanding across parties (i.e., funders) and stakeholders (i.e., collaborative institutions) on the project's data environments. As a "collections as data" project, clarity around the scope, volume, availability, nature and digital accessibility of the project's data is of central importance to the Sloane Lab, its team, partners and stakeholders. The Data Atlas also acts as an organisational tool for infrastructure development. It has aided the design of appropriate data mapping, modelling and ingestion approaches for the Sloane Lab project and wider Knowledge Base. It has enabled partner institutions to identify data absences in their digitised collections. As a result of this, we have seen institutions changing the prioritisation within their own digitisation pipelines to cover such absences. Furthermore, it has helped cultural heritage institutions realise that these kinds of institutional collaborations between curators and technical teams are necessary. 
URL https://sloanelab.org/data-atlas/
 
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 Tool for Data Enrichment via Wikidata 
Description The project has developed a command-line tool for performing data enrichment from the Wikidata knowledge base. The tool takes as input a list of entities (in the current version, people and places) in JSON format, and interactively provides to the user all the matching entities found in Wikidata. The tool queries the Wikidata API and then applies a matching algorithm based on the Levenshtein string distance measure, plus additional type-specific checks based on the available data. The tool allows the user to check and approve each match through a terminal interface. To aid in the process, the tool provides a side-by-side comparison of the label and description of the two entities, and colour-codes the matches based on a confidence level. As an option, it is also possible to enable a fully automated matching based on a certain confidence threshold. The tool then retrieves and stores relevant data from each Wikidata entity so that it can be used for data enrichment. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The tool has allowed the project to significantly expand the number of links to Wikidata and enrich of the knowledge base with missing data. For people, we have added their textual descriptions, aliases, birth and death dates; for places, their textual descriptions and geographic coordinates. For all entities, we have also imported images from Wikimedia Commons (whenever available), and links to the VIAF authority file. We plan to extend the tool to support additional types of entities and additional data for each type of entity. We plan to publish the tool as open source at a later date, publishing it through an online repository. 
 
Title Workflow on Zooniverse for Manual Transcription 
Description The Sloane Lab project hosted on Zooniverse platform has another annotation workflow which allows experts in the digital humanities domain to transcribe the handwritten specimens located on side margins of the Historia Plantarum. The transcription process is facilitated through Zooniverse's online interface, enhanced with detailed tutorial, guiding users through the transcription of each margin, ensuring accurate and efficient transcriptions. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The handwritten notes on side margins represent specimens in Sloan's botanical collection including volume and page numbers. To find a botanical specimen in Sloan's collection today, someone must visit National History Museum (NHM) and look in the Historia Plantarum book. By transcribing these notations and integrate them with plant name dataset, we get the plant names referenced to specimens in Sloan's Herbarium. The dataset can be ingested into the NHM's data system thereby creating a searchable tool to access NHM's historical botanical collection. 
 
Title Data Mobilised from Ray 
Description The dataset was extracted from Historia Plantarum by John Ray, a botany book which was written by John Ray to describe and classify all plant species known in 1704. Sloane's personal copy of this book contains marginalia that provide an essential index for navigating the Sloane Herbarium. Next to the name of each species, Sloane recorded the herbarium volume and folio where specimens of that species could be found. Species not included in Ray's book were listed in the page headers and footers. The plant names presented in this book are polynomial and made up of parts consisting of Accepted, Synonym and Common names. The extracted dataset is represented in JSON format and contains the following entries: • The printed plant names divided into their individual name types, each linked with their respective authors. • The references on side margins. • The handwritten plant names on footers and header. • The associations between printed plant names and handwritten texts on left/right margins. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact Extracting early modern plant names and making them accessible. Synonyms have largely been neglected by historians of early modern botany. Despite naturalists and collectors at the time dedicating much of their working life to identifying names and synonyms, a single comprehensive list of synonyms was never finished. By extracting the plant names and synonyms listed by Ray in his Historia Plantarum, the Sloane Lab is creating the first step towards making connections between plant naming systems over time. 
 
Title Hans Sloane's Collection of Vegetables and Vegetable Substances [Data set], Natural History Museum London 
Description Hans Sloane's Collection of Vegetables and Vegetable Substances originally consisted of 12,752 botanical specimens, most housed in small glass and wooden boxes. Sealed inside these boxes were parts of plants such as seeds, beans, leaves, bark and gum, that were collected between the 1680s and 1750s. All sorts of people from around the world were involved in the transportation and exchange of these specimens. In London, Sloane had these items put into boxes, where they were numbered and a corresponding description of the item was entered into his manuscript catalogue. Today, the Vegetable Substances collection comprises more than 8000 surviving specimens/boxes and the original three-volume manuscript catalogue. This dataset includes a transcription of said manuscript and all 12,752 handwritten entries. At the core of these entries is information about what the object is, and from here, the level of detail is varied. This ranges from information about people and places, local uses of plants, margin annotations (which detail cabinet and drawer numbers where Sloane kept these things in his house) to bibliographic references, and modern determinations. Victoria Pickering; Charles Jarvis; Mark Carine (2023). Hans Sloane's Collection of Vegetables and Vegetable Substances [Data set]. Natural History Museum. https://doi.org/10.5519/lp5a5t1d 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The development and publication of this dataset has underpinned the work that has taken place in several Sloane Lab participatory engagement activities, as well as formed the basis for research for a number of PhD students and Sloane Lab Community Fellowships. 
URL https://data.nhm.ac.uk/dataset/sloane-vegetable-substances/resource/f8a45685-19fe-44e5-9ff4-1e82d40a...
 
Title Sloane Lab Contemporary Datasets 
Description The datasets contain digital representations of datasets from the British Museum, Natural History Museum and British Library, provided in RDF format and published as Linked Data. The datasets contain records describing objects from the Sloane collection. At the moment, the Sloane Lab project has fully ingested the British Museum dataset (15,000+ records), a subset of Natural History Museum datasets (3,000+ records), and the British Library manuscript dataset (4,000+ records). The datasets were originally in disparate formats and have been converted into a common RDF representation based on the Sloane Lab Data Model. The project is working to ingest more datasets including the final British Library dataset of printed books and the Vegetable Substances dataset from NHM. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2014 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The publication of the datasets as Linked Data allows for complex studies on the contemporary datasets provided by the partner institutions, including the textual content of the records and any available structured annotations (object types, people, places, materials, techniques, plant or animal species, etc.). For the first time, it is possible to run complex queries such as finding mentions of a certain entity across the available datasets, including arbitrary sets of conditions (e.g., all records mentioning the word "Capsicum", finding illustrations of pepper plants from the British Museum and actual specimens of the plant from the NHM). This has been tested and validated experimentally through the development of the Sloane Lab knowledge base. 
 
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 Historical Datasets 
Description The datasets contain digital representations of Hans Sloane's historical catalogues, provided in RDF format and published as Linked Data. At the moment, the Sloane Lab project has ingested five datasets corresponding to the following manuscripts: Miscellanies (7 catalogues), Fossils vol. I (6 catalogues), Fossils vol. V (4 catalogues), Printed Books (1 catalogue), Manuscripts (1 catalogue). The datasets correspond to the ones that were annotated in the context of the previous project Enlightenment Architecture. Each dataset has been parsed from the original XML-TEI format and transformed into an RDF representation. New historical datasets are going to be added based on additional manuscripts that are currently being transcribed. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2013 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The publication of the datasets as Linked Data allows for complex studies on the historical catalogues, including the textual content of catalogue entries and any available structured annotations (mainly, people and place names). For the first time, it is possible to run complex queries including, for example, all mentions of a certain person or place across the available datasets, including arbitrary sets of conditions (e.g., all entries mentioning the name James Petiver found in entries 100 to 200 of the Antiquities catalogue). This has been validated experimentally through the development of the Sloane Lab knowledge base. 
 
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/
 
Title The Sloane Lab Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) model 
Description The Sloane Lab HTR model is trained on Sir Hans Sloane's Catalogue of Miscellanies with the Transkribus PyLaia HTR engine. Number of words in training set: 32,103 Base model: Transkribus English Handwriting M2 Character Error Rate (CER): 7.3% / The model transcribes 92.7% of the characters in the validation set correctly. 
Type Of Material Computer model/algorithm 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The Sloane Lab HTR model is the first machine learning model which has the capability to transcribe the historical manuscript catalogues of Sloane above 90% of accuracy; The HTR model will serve as a tool for future data mobilisation of the Amuleta Mahumetica catalogue. The HTR model will serve as a tool for future data mobilisation of handwritten material by Sloane and will feed into multipurpose HTR models hosted by the Transkribus platform; The experiments with Transkribus highlighted limitations in HTR technology and workflow deployment for historical textual documents with complex layouts. 
 
Description Community Fellowship - Anna Sofia Lippolis 
Organisation University of Bologna
Country Italy 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Paid stipend of £7,500; Provided mentorship for duration of 3-months on project planning, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of results
Collaborator Contribution Conducted research on Sloane Lab data; Contributed with expertise to Sloane Lab team - Facilitated outreach and community engagement work
Impact Project title: Exploring polyvocal knowledge in the Sloane collections Outputs: A Multivocality Ontology model, in .ttl format; The documentation of the ontology, along with competency questions, requirements, user stories and use cases; A report of the Fellowship The outputs are available on GitHub: https://github.com/dersuchendee/SLCommunityFellowship
Start Year 2023
 
Description Community Fellowship - Dr Dorothy Kyagaba Sebbowa 
Organisation Makerere University
Country Uganda 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution - Paid stipend of £7,500; Provided mentorship for duration of 3-months on project planning, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of results
Collaborator Contribution - Conducted research on Sloane Lab data; Contributed with expertise to Sloane Lab team - Facilitated outreach and community engagement work; Provided networking opportunities with Anti-Colonial Archives Working Group, Cambridge Digital Humanities
Impact Project title: Anti-Colonial Annotations of Sloane Jamaican references: Inquires into African Slavery Outputs: an educational tutorial, online workshops and publication (pending) The Educational tutorial is accessible on: http://sbb2023.pbworks.com/w/page/153540849/FrontPage
Start Year 2023
 
Description Partnership with Collecting the West (CTW) 
Organisation Deakin University
Country Australia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Knowledge exchange; Contributions from CTW to participatory research of Sloane Lab; support for CTW in making further funding bids in Australia
Collaborator Contribution CTW is a formal partner of the Sloane Lab project, named in the original application. They provide an international perspective to contribute to the participatory research model at the heart of Sloane Lab. CTW colleagues have met Sloane Lab members online and in person. In November 2023, Sloane Lab presented the project's work at a major meeting in Australia organised by CTW to set the agenda for future collections and digital collections research in Australia. Sloane Lab team members participated in workshops to help develop a major funding bid for digital collections research in Australia. One of the Sloane Lab CI's (Hill) acts as an advisor to the CTW team creating this funding bid.
Impact N/A
Start Year 2021
 
Description Partnership with Collecting the West (CTW) 
Organisation University of Western Australia
Country Australia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Knowledge exchange; Contributions from CTW to participatory research of Sloane Lab; support for CTW in making further funding bids in Australia
Collaborator Contribution CTW is a formal partner of the Sloane Lab project, named in the original application. They provide an international perspective to contribute to the participatory research model at the heart of Sloane Lab. CTW colleagues have met Sloane Lab members online and in person. In November 2023, Sloane Lab presented the project's work at a major meeting in Australia organised by CTW to set the agenda for future collections and digital collections research in Australia. Sloane Lab team members participated in workshops to help develop a major funding bid for digital collections research in Australia. One of the Sloane Lab CI's (Hill) acts as an advisor to the CTW team creating this funding bid.
Impact N/A
Start Year 2021
 
Description Partnership with Collecting the West (CTW) 
Organisation Western Australian Museum
Country Australia 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution Knowledge exchange; Contributions from CTW to participatory research of Sloane Lab; support for CTW in making further funding bids in Australia
Collaborator Contribution CTW is a formal partner of the Sloane Lab project, named in the original application. They provide an international perspective to contribute to the participatory research model at the heart of Sloane Lab. CTW colleagues have met Sloane Lab members online and in person. In November 2023, Sloane Lab presented the project's work at a major meeting in Australia organised by CTW to set the agenda for future collections and digital collections research in Australia. Sloane Lab team members participated in workshops to help develop a major funding bid for digital collections research in Australia. One of the Sloane Lab CI's (Hill) acts as an advisor to the CTW team creating this funding bid.
Impact N/A
Start Year 2021
 
Description PhD Student Placement LAHP - Brad Scott (6 months, 2024) 
Organisation Queen Mary University of London
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Broadening the scope of Brad's PhD research, and situating it within wider Digital Humanities outputs as part of the Sloane Lab.
Collaborator Contribution Contributing research on people and place connected to the NHM's Historical Botanical Collection, specifically the Sloane Herbarium.
Impact Output is pending but will consist of a dataset related to the NHM's Historical Botanical Collection.
Start Year 2024
 
Description PhD Student Racial Justice Placement Techne - Akosua Paries-Osei (6 months, 2023) 
Organisation Royal Holloway, University of London
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Access and research related to Sloane's collection of 'Vegetable Substances', specifically the NHM dataset: Victoria Pickering; Charles Jarvis; Mark Carine (2023). Hans Sloane's Collection of Vegetables and Vegetable Substances [Data set]. Natural History Museum. https://doi.org/10.5519/lp5a5t1d
Collaborator Contribution This research utilised Sloane's 'Vegetable Substances' collection to consider acts of resistance by enslaved African women in Jamaica, through the use of plant material for anti-fertility.
Impact Outputs included tours, talks, presentations, and images of specimens which will be added to the NHM data portal.
Start Year 2023
 
Description UCL MA/MSc in Digital Humanities work placement - Jiawei Liu 
Organisation University College London
Department Department of Information Studies
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This NHM work placement offered students the opportunity to practice and improve DH skills through original, primary research; introduced the practical realities of combining traditional humanities with digital humanities research; learnings around how a cultural heritage research project is organised and functions; offered working knowledge of the current digital approaches and technologies used for analyzing early modern sources; experience of managing tasks and efficiently organising their time in order to reach targets.
Collaborator Contribution Data mobilisation and datasets related to John Ray's Historia Plantarum; improved workflows
Impact Outputs included a large amount of data mobilisation from John Ray's Historia Plantarum, specifically handwritten marginalia found across Volumes I and II.
Start Year 2023
 
Description UCL MA/MSc in Digital Humanities work placement - Shirley Chang 
Organisation University College London
Department Department of Information Studies
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This NHM work placement offered students the opportunity to practice and improve DH skills through original, primary research; introduced the practical realities of combining traditional humanities with digital humanities research; learnings around how a cultural heritage research project is organised and functions; offered working knowledge of the current digital approaches and technologies used for analyzing early modern sources; experience of managing tasks and efficiently organising their time in order to reach targets.
Collaborator Contribution Data mobilisation and datasets related to John Ray's Historia Plantarum; improved workflows
Impact Outputs included a large amount of data mobilisation from John Ray's Historia Plantarum, specifically handwritten marginalia found across Volumes I and II.
Start Year 2023
 
Description UCL MA/MSc in Digital Humanities work placement - Yuyaan Yang 
Organisation University College London
Department Department of Information Studies
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This NHM work placement offered students the opportunity to practice and improve DH skills through original, primary research; introduced the practical realities of combining traditional humanities with digital humanities research; learnings around how a cultural heritage research project is organised and functions; offered working knowledge of the current digital approaches and technologies used for analyzing early modern sources; experience of managing tasks and efficiently organising their time in order to reach targets.
Collaborator Contribution Data mobilisation and datasets related to John Ray's Historia Plantarum; improved workflows
Impact Outputs included a large amount of data mobilisation from John Ray's Historia Plantarum, specifically handwritten marginalia found across Volumes I and II.
Start Year 2023
 
Description Workshop collaboration with the Heritage Seed Library (2023) 
Organisation Garden Organic
Department Heritage Seed Library
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Workshop hosted at University College London with 22 participants as part of the participatory co-design element of the project.
Collaborator Contribution Presentation at the workshop.
Impact Data analysis
Start Year 2023
 
Description 'For the curious and interested' presentation. (January 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 'For the curious and interested' talk, Down County Museum. 20th January 2024
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description 'Looking Back to Build Future Shared Collections Project at the British Museum' (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Looking Back to Build Future Shared Collections Project at the British Museum', at Encountering Children of Empire symposium, jointly organised by the National Trust for Scotland and the Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies, University of Glasgow at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland. 14th September 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description 'Sir Hans Sloane's Vegetable Substances' (March 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 'Sir Hans Sloane's Vegetable Substances', Down County Museum. 2nd March 2024
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' British Museum and Natural History Museum (October 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' British Museum and Natural History Museum, UK. Community/Professional partners. 12th October 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales (November 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales. 26th November 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum, UK (November 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum, UK. 1st November 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum, UK (November 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum, UK. 8th November 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum, UK (October 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact , 'Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum, UK. Community/Professional partners. 25th October 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description 'Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections' (April 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presented at Towards a National Collection conference, British Museum, UK
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
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 Annual Conference of the Alliance of Early Universal Museums (September 2023) 
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 Presentations of new exhibitions, displays and issues arising by members of the alliance and to introduce new members and discuss their collections, in Franckesche Stiftungen, Halle.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.francke-halle.de/files/user_upload/Dateien/Veranstaltungen/AEUM-Conference_September_202...
 
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 Challenges and Opportunities of Semantic Modelling and Enrichment in Small and Large Museum collections. (March 2023) 
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 International Seminar on Semantic Web, Cultural Heritage, and Art Historical Knowledge: Conceptual Models, Ontologies, and Epistemological Implications, March 27-28, 2023 Museo Picasso Málaga
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://andalexproject.iarthislab.eu/semantic-web-seminar/
 
Description Collections as Data infrastructures: Perspectives from the United Kingdom. (November 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited talk at 17:15 Colloquium of the ETH Library Zurich.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://library.ethz.ch/en/news-and-courses/news/news-articles/2023/11/1715-kolloquium-der-eth-bibli...
 
Description Collections as data Infrastrukturen - Collections as data infrastructures (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Focus group discussion to enquire into interest into digital collections as data infrastructures projects, conducted in German, with invited colleagues from German heritage organisations. The activity was part of the Sloane Lab Knowledge Exchange Event (Europe) in Darmstadt, Germany (06.-07.09.23).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Collections as data infrastructures (November 2023) 
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 Focus group discussion to enquire into interest into digital collections as data infrastructures projects, conducted with invited colleagues from Australian heritage organisations. The activity was part of the Workshop for Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence bid on Museum Collections (24.11.23)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
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 Digital tools and eighteenth-century botanical specimens by Victoria Pickering at, The Language of Nature, SHNH International Summer Meeting, a talk (June 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact The Language of Nature held in Birmingham (UK) as part of the Society for the History of Natural History's HNH International Summer Meeting on 13th June. Victoria shared recent work taking place in the NHM's Historical Botanical Collection linked to the Sloane Lab and data mobilisation.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://shnh.org.uk/news/call-for-papers-the-language-of-nature-shnh-international-summer-meeting-an...
 
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 Discovery Project Webinar: Digital Infrastructure (February 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation titled: Collection data infrastructures: Latent challenges and dynamics in the heritage sector.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tanc-discovery-project-webinar-digital-infrastructure-tickets-8270657...
 
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 European Knowledge Exchange Event (September 2023) 
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 European Knowledge Exchange Event titled "Connecting, co-designing, and engaging with digital collections and infrastructures for heritage: challenges and case studies" held at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany on 6th and 7th September 2023. This event provided an opportunity for the Sloane Lab an opportunity to share the findings with the digital cultural heritage community in Europe and host 12 speakers from the heritage community- other research projects, 'early career' researchers, and other Discovery Projects funded by Towards a National Collection.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Focus Group in Darmstadt, Germany (September 2023) 
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 Focus Group in Darmstadt, Germany, September 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Focus Group in Melbourne, Australia (November 2023) 
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 Focus Group in Melbourne, Australia November 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Historical Botanical Collections Tour for Down County Museum, BM touring exhibition community participants, by Victoria Pickering and Mark Carine, a talk/tour/interactive session with collection (October 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This event consisted of a tour and interactive session for the BM touring exhibition ('For the curious and interested) community participants from Down County Museum and Ceredigion. This opportunity allowed for participants to look at and discuss specimens in the collection.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
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 Lightening talk, presented at NHM Collections and Culture Townhall by Victoria Pickering, Talk (Dec 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact An overview of work being done in the NHM's Historical Botanical Collection as part of the Sloane Lab project was given at the NHM's Collections and Culture theme. The audience consisted of NHM staff, colleagues and science associates and prompted interesting conversations about future work in the collections and museum.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Looking back to build future shared collections: reports from the Sloane Lab (July 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Panel presentation at the DH2023 conference (10.-14.07.23) in Graz, Austria. In this panel we offered a multifaceted and interdisciplinary perspective on the development of the Sloane Lab. We contextualised it both within a wider, nationally-funded drive to make the UK's cultural heritage, and information about it, computationally tractable and the more internationally-positioned work of 'Collections as Data'.

https://www.conftool.pro/dh2023/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=43?sentations=show
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10172116
 
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 Masterclass - 'Culture in Collections' by Victoria Pickering, a pre-recorded lecture and a live, moderated, interactive Q&A session (May 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Natural history collections describe more than biodiversity. They also reveal and confront the changing narratives between natural history, science and society. This six-week short course, allowed viewers to connect with Museum curators, scientists and archivists as they used the collection and its historical highlights to explore how natural history collections can elucidate societal changes, reveal hidden human narratives and how cutting-edge technologies are enabling a new era of digitisation. This course was delivered online and each week, a pre-recorded lecture developed specifically for this course was released ahead of the live, moderated, interactive Q&A session later in the week.

This specific masterclass was: 'Creating a historical botanical collection: people and places in the eighteenth century' and this lecture presented a deep dive into the Natural History Museum's historical botanical collection.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/study/public-courses/masterclass/culture-in-collections.html
 
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 Participatory Workshop at Down County Museum (May 2023) 
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 Participatory workshop
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Participatory Workshop at Sir Hans Sloane Centre (July 2023) 
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 Participatory workshop.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Participatory Workshop with Heritage Seed Library (April 2023) 
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 "Who holds the data? Connecting cultivated plants to specimens in the Sloane Lab" Participatory workshop held at University College London in collaboration with The Heritage Seed Library. Participants included Gardeners, seed collectors, botanists. The purpose of the workshop was to explore the relevance of historical catalogues in contemporary society through represented plants cultivated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in relation to gardeners, members of the Heritage Seed Library, and wider networks. The workshop also explore what kind of knowledge non-experienced users might be interested to find/search/use when searching the collections online to understand how catalogues could be enhanced.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Plants, People and Place in the 18th Century, presented at Down County Museum, by Victoria Pickering, a public talk (Mar 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A public talk given at Down County Museum that is currently hosting the British Museum's touring exhibition, 'For the curious and interested', which is a key output of the Sloane Lab project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Presentation at Collect The West, Melbourne (November 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections? Research the Future of Museums presented at Collecting the West in Melbourne Australia, November 2023.

The event focused on three questions connected to the recent decision to include collections as part of the national research infrastructure roadmap: What is a 'national collection', what do we mean when we think of 'collections as research infrastructure' and what might the answers to these questions mean for the future of collections?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
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 Re-examining Sir Hans Sloane's collections, blog post by NHM Science Comms (January 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A news blog post published by the NHM on 18th January 2024 to coincide with the Sloane Lab BM Touring Exhibition opening, 'For the Curious and interested', which brings together a selection of specimens from the NHM, along with items from the BM and BL, to explore how and why Sloane collected these items. New research on these objects is now giving an insight into a range of topics from the climate crisis to Black resistance during the slave trade.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2024/january/reexamining-sir-hans-sloanes-collections.html
 
Description Re:EX9 Re:Enlightenment Exchange 9 (July 2023) 
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 Workshop to discuss recent developments in teaching and to create useful website and resources for those teaching 18th Century Enlightenment; NYU.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.reenlightening.org/rex9/
 
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 Semantic Technologies for Historical Collections - The Sloane Lab Knowledge Base (June 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Presented the semantics of the Sloane Lab Knowledge base in relation to the ISO standard conceptual model for humanities data CIDOC-CRM and the proposed Sloane Lab extensions aimed at coordinating cross reference and linking across datasets, focusing on Place, Person, Object, Material and other entities of interest. The presentation took place in virtual event the "Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp" on 21 June 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.taxonomybootcamp.com/London/2023/basics.aspx
 
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 Kick Off Event and Knowledge Base User Experience Testing Session (February 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Networking event for Community Fellows and User Experience testing of the Knowledge Base to provide feedback for the Technical team.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
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 Symposium Series (May 2023) 
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 Online Seminar Series (May to June 2023) titled (Re)connecting heritage collections as data, infrastructure, and participatory engagement: big dreams, big challenges. The symposium series hosted 9 speakers interested in the intersections between collections as data, cataloguing histories and critical archival studies, heritage infrastructures, critical digital heritage, and information science.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop 
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 Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with museum partners representatives, British Museum. 27th - 28th July 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop (August 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' British Museum. 2nd August 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop (August 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop (virtual object session) with community partners,' British Museum. 9th August 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop (July 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop at Down County Museum with Community/Professional Partners. 19 July 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' British Library (October 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' British Library. Community/ Professional partners. 11th October 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales (December 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales. 11th December 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales (February 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales. 11th February 2024
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales (January 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Ceredigion Museum, Wales. 14th January 2024
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (August 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 23rd August 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (August 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 16th August 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (October 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 4th October 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 20th September 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 6th September 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 27th September 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Sloane Lab Touring Exhibition development workshop with community partners,' Down County Museum. 13th September 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
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 Sloane Lab: Domain Vocabularies for Semantic Interoperability of Museum Collections (May 2023) 
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 Presented the contribution of domain vocabulary and terminology resources in Sloane Lab as a way of semantic interoperability and retrieval mechanism across disparate data collections. The presentation took place in King's College London during the "New Directions in Museum Analytics" event on 18 May 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://kingsdh.net/2023/04/05/museum-analytics-programme/
 
Description Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections (February 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections collections' British Museum Staff Breakfast. 29th February 2024
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections' at 'Research the Future of Museum Collections' workshop (November 2023) 
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 'Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections' at 'Research the Future of Museum Collections' workshop, Deakin University, Burwood Corporate Centre, Melbourne, Australia. 22nd November 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Sloane Lab: Why look back to build future shared collections? (November 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Pannel presentation at the Researching the Future of Museum Collections symposium hosted by Deakin University (Melbourne). 22.11.-23.11.23
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
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 Mediterranean world of Hans Sloane: insights from the Sloane Lab, by Mark Carine, Conference Poster, XVII OPTIMA meeting in Erice (September 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The Congress consisted of three days, with Scientific sessions that focused on the main Botanical themes and included one plenary conference, two round tables, poster session, on topics of significant Botanical-social impact and major issues of public interest. Carine's poster engaged Mediterranean botanists with Sloane Lab resources, specifically the 'Vegetable Substances'.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.optima-bot.org/meetings/17/XVII_Main.html
 
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 User Experience Testing Workshop for the Sloane Lab Knowledge Base 
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 On the 1st of of February, 2024 we organised 2 User Experience (UX) workshops, which aimed at testing the usability and usefulness of the Sloane Lab Knowledge Base across different user groups ahead of its public launch. The labs were attended by 12 participants in total, including industry professionals, e.g. curators and botanists, as well as students and members of the general public.The workshops increased Sloane Lab's project impact, as the feedback of participants offered great insights, helping us to significantly improve and optimise Sloane Lab Knowledge Base ahead of public launch, so that it is more accessible, usable and therefore more valuable to interested audiences.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
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 Workshop for Alliance of Early Universal Museums (April 2023) 
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 Workshop in Halle to prepare for larger workshop in September when new museums would be joining the Alliance.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.francke-halle.de/en/alliance-aeum
 
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