Type of session: Talk

Approximate duration: 1.5 hr

Skill level: All

We are living an exciting moment: a deluge of documents, texts, images, videos, tweets, etc. are accessible via the web that can be used for conducting social studies. In this sense, the Web is a data platform that can be fully exploited by non-specialist if they have the right tools. Yet, the majority of tools are limited to specific domains or very specific tasks. 

The objective of this talk is to introduce the basic concepts that builds the Web (HTML pages, HTTP protocol, URI/URL, client-server architectures, etc.) and how they work together. This knowledge can help non-expert you understand how to use more basic tools for retrieving data from the Web or communicating with computer specialists. As an example, I will describe how to build a corpus using articles from The Guardian web service.

Type of session: Talk

Title:  From Hack & Yacks to Reading Groups: Keeping skills apace Digital Scholarship

Name of session facilitator(s): Nora

Approximate duration: 1 hr

Skill level: All

Proposal:

Research libraries and cultural heritage institutions must be able to adapt to a changing research landscape and invest in the development of staff skills and core competencies to match if they are to continue to effectively support and engage with modern scholars. The Digital Curator team at British Library creates a variety of opportunities all year round for library staff to develop skills necessary to support emerging areas of modern scholarship, particularly the Digital Humanities (DH).

In this talk I can share a bit about how we approach this through our Digital Scholarship Training Programme, and in turn would love to hear from other campers where and how they keep their skills up to date!

Prerequisite: Just an interest

Type of session : TALK

Title : How to limit black box effects in collaborative projects

Name of session facilitator(s) : Geraldine + Javier ?

Approximate duration : 30mn ?

Skill level : all

Proposal

“In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs without any knowledge of its internal workings” (Wikepedia) + “a complicated electronic device whose internal mechanism is usually hidden from or mysterious to the user; broadly : anything that has mysterious or unknown internal functions or mechanisms” (Merriam Webster).

In research labs as well as in many companies today, computer scientists are working with non-specialists of computing who delegate to them tasks they are unable to perform on their own. Such a collaboration can lead to a productive partnership on both sides but dialogue between individuals and teams with different backgrounds, skills and methodologies can be challenging. One of those challenges is the blackbox effect. For a non-specialist of computing, how much does one need to understand of the mechanisms involved in the automated processes of the tasks performed to guarantee the scientific validity of the results ? What level of training is necessary and in what ? For a computer scientist working with non-specialists, how to make those processes understandable ? Is drawing a step by step summary of those tasks realistic ? Which tools could make it more easily manageable ?

Prerequisite : none