Welcome to In the Spotlight!

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Welcome to In the Spotlight!

mia

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm Mia, and I work in the Digital Scholarship team at the British Library.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the project, particularly interesting things you've noticed on the playbills or ways we could improve the interface. You can post here, tweet at us @libcrowds or email us at digitalresearch@bl.uk.

NaomiClifford

mia Hi Mia, I've just joined. This is a question about transcription of titles. (1) Do I include the final full point after the title? and (2) If the title is given on the playbill in caps, do I transcribe it as caps? Thanks - Naomi

mia

@alexmendes has released an update that fixes lots of small issues reported by participants in Convert-a-Card and In the Spotlight. We've also made some usability tweaks following tests. If you speak geek, his release notes are at https://github.com/LibCrowds/libcrowds/releases

Your forum posts, emails and tweets have been really useful in planning our work, so thank you all!

mia

If you're new here - welcome! We'd love to know what you think and what brought you here.

In the meantime, here are some earlier blog posts written as we worked on the project:

Introducing... Playbills In the Spotlight http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2017/09/introducing-playbills-in-the-spotlight.html

In the Spotlight: Application design http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2017/09/in-the-spotlight-application-design.html

mia

You might also be interested in our Press release: https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2017/november/playbills-crowdsourcing-website-launch or launch blog post: http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2017/11/youre-invited-to-come-and-play-in-the-spotlight.html

mia

One for the geeks! Our software engineer @alexmendes has posted about how In the Spotlight used IIIF and W3C standards http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2017/11/crowdsourcing-using-iiif-and-web-annotations.html

graemeandrew

mia This is fantastic work by the team and @alexmendes, am enjoying contributing while also thinking about other applications for LibCrowds.

mia

We've posted an update to our blog at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

'As 2017 turns into 2018, we thought it was time for an update on our progress with In the Spotlight. We've had over 20,000 contributions from over 2,000 visitors from 61 countries. Together, they've completed 21 sets of tasks on individual volumes - a wonderful result. We're still analysing it but the transcribed data looks good so far. Our next step is agreeing the details of including the results in the Library's catalogue - once that's done, information from individual playbills will be searchable for the first time.'

Keep an eye on the blog for a post by an In the Spotlight contributor this weekend. If you'd like to share ideas or things you've found with us, get in touch! Our details are at https://www.libcrowds.com/collection/playbills/about

mia

Here's a link to Edward's fantastic post, The Flitch of Bacon: An Unexpected Journey Through the Collections of the British Library, http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2017/12/the-flitch-of-bacon-an-unexpected-journey-through-the-collections-of-the-british-library.html - read on for news of his unexpected journey!

mia

I had no idea anyone had played with Playbills data before In the Spotlight! Olivia Vane @OliviaFVane produced this timeline and explains why OCR doesn't cut it http://oliviavane.co.uk/research/Playbills.html

playbillstimeline-viz.png

mia

If you've been lucky enough to reach the end of a volume, you might have seen our 'celebration' screen. We've just heard that an error message is appearing instead of text explaining that you've done all the playbills in that particular set - sorry about that, and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can after Alex gets back from a well-earned holiday!

mia

To the lovely volunteers working through date transcriptions and encountering playbills without years - we see you, and appreciate your efforts!

And I haven't yet joined the dots to find out which playbill this comment was about, but I'm looking forward to it! 'Provides explanation of new lighting (chandelier made by Royal Glass-works of Dudley) including use of gas and wax'

mia

We've started sending an email when someone leaves a comment during a task - it's a great way to get a sense of what you're encountering. Thanks for your comments!

mia

Our @christian has written a post for the Library's English and Drama blog: http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2018/03/the-rich-pageant-of-historical-playbills-.html

mia

We've posted some update stats, a glimpse into the wonderful things you've been sharing in comments, and lots of thank yous in our latest blog post, Shine a light on past entertainments with In the Spotlight

http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2018/03/shine-a-light-on-past-entertainments-with-in-the-spotlight.html

mia

Can you tell we've been busy lately? If you're curious about how results are checked during the analysis process: https://docs.libcrowds.com/ It's a bit geeky so let us know if you're curious but need more info to make sense of it!

mia

We have nearly 90,000 contributions, made up of many, many tasks and comments and hopefully lots of moments of fun - thank you all so much for your help!

As always, there's lots going on behind the scenes to make the most of the data you're helping create, so that it benefits future researchers and others.

mia

@beeashlell has been working with us as a PhD placement student, and she's got a great new post with some early results from the project - check it out at http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2018/07/crowdsourcing-comedy-date-and-genre-results-from-in-the-spotlight.html

mia

Are you signed up to our newsletter for occasional updates on crowdsourcing projects at the British Library? Check out the archive https://us11.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=08e409d3d85876a17ac4c1d09&id=e52e46328f or join now http://eepurl.com/btvBKT

mia

And here's a list of past newsletters:
09/08/2018 - Your input needed! Help us understand who's 'In the Spotlight' http://eepurl.com/bH8vf1
30/07/2018 - Celebrating 100,000 contributions on the LibCrowds platform http://eepurl.com/dCA9Nb
04/04/2018 - Shine a light on the past! Spring 2018 Crowdsourcing updates from the British Library http://eepurl.com/doXy01
21/12/2017 - British Library Crowdsourcing updates, Winter 2017 http://eepurl.com/dfgg0r
31/05/2017 - LibCrowds Spring Newsletter http://eepurl.com/cPwiMT