The DSTP provides unique chances for British Library staff to learn how to do useful stuff with our digital collections and data. It enables colleagues to gain digital, data and AI literacy skills and to support emerging areas of modern scholarship.
9 March 2026Blog series Digital scholarship
Running continuously since 2012, this internal and bespoke staff training programme is one of the cornerstones of the Digital Research Team’s work at the British Library. The Digital Research Team oversees the design and delivery of roughly 40 training events a year. Since its inception, well over a thousand individual staff members have come through the programme, on average attending three or more courses each and the Library has seen a step change in its capacity to support innovative digital research both among staff and researchers.
Watch Nora McGregor, [Internet Archive], Digital Curator, give a presentation about the Digital Scholarship Training Programme [YouTube] — where it started, where it's going and what it hopes to accomplish.
As digital research methods have changed overtime, so too have course topics and content. In 2026-2027, we are particularly interested in exploring the topics of:
The DSTP is delivered in multiple ways, with the main unifying theme being that any staff member can join regardless of previous experience, team, or job title. This means that everything is pitched at beginners, with any jargon or technical information needed explained at the start of the session. We have a mix of formal, informal and self-led opportunities for colleagues to take part in, mainly comprising of workshops, Hack & Yacks, our Digital Scholarship Reading Group and our 21st Century Curatorship Talk series.
Our workshops are an opportunity to spend either a half day or a whole day really becoming conversant with a topic. They will have formal learning goals set out at the start of the session to guide expectations and experience of the workshop. These take place either when we’ve been approached with a learning need that we believe we can meet, or when we see a topic that would be beneficial to a number of staff. Recent topics for workshops include:
We host a monthly 'Hack & Yack' meet up where we all take some time to have a hands-on exploration of new tools, techniques, and applications (the hack half) and chat about what we’re learning (or yack, in the American vernacular!). Like all of our events no previous experience is ever needed, and not only are they aimed at complete beginners, but we’re usually learning something new too!
These two-hour sessions can take a variety of formats, like the group working through a variety of online tutorials on a particular digital topic or having a resident ‘expert’ guide us through a new topic. The only goal is that we leave having learned something new.
The Digital Scholarship Reading Group holds discussions on the first Wednesday of each month. Each month we discuss an article, conference, podcast or video related to digital scholarship. It's a great way to keep up with new ideas or reality check trends in digital scholarship (including the digital humanities). We take suggestions for topics that are particularly relevant to diverse teams or disciplines.
Our 21st Century Curatorship Talks look at exciting, innovative, projects and research at the intersection of cultural heritage collections and new technologies. These talks provide a forum for keeping up with new developments and emerging technologies in scholarship, libraries and cultural heritage.
The training programme served as the impetus for the LIBER Digital Scholarship and Data Science Topic Guides initiative which launched in 2025 with 20 guides covering topics staff indicated were essential knowledge for a well-rounded foundation in modern librarianship. Included in this list is one on how to Start your own local DS Training Programme – Digital Scholarship & Data Science Topic Guides if this sounds like something you’d like to implement at your organisation.
In 2022 we celebrated 10 years of the DSTP and used the moment to capture experiences from our regular attendees and instructors [YouTube].
The DSTP also led to an increased demand for coding skills. This led to a collaborative project in 2019, with the British Library and partners Birkbeck University and The National Archives being awarded £222,420 in funding by the Institute of Coding (IoC) to co-develop a one-year part-time postgraduate Certificate (PGCert), Computing for Cultural Heritage [Internet Archive], as part of a £4.8 million University skills drive. The course aimed to provide working professionals, particularly across the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), with an understanding of basic programming, analytic tools and computing environments to support them in their daily work.
For more information on the Training Programme's most recent year, including our performance numbers and topics covered by the training, please see the infographic below.
And if you're interested in where we started compared to where we are now, you can check out our two conference papers from Digital Humanities 2013 and Digital Humanities 2016 for more details on how the Training Programme was established. Any queries about this project can be directed to digitalresearch@bl.uk.
This blog is part of our Digital Scholarship series, tracking exciting developments at the intersection of libraries, scholarship and technology.
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![Infographic reads: "Digital Scholarship Training Programme Running continuously since 2012, the DSTP provides unique opportunities for staff to learn how to do cool and useful stuff with our digital collections and data, and gain valuable digital, data and AI literacy skills and knowledge to support emerging areas of modern scholarship in the process! Doodle illustration of an open laptop sitting on a stack of books Training Opportunities Talks 1 hour guest lectures held once or twice a month Our 21st Century Curatorship talk series looks at exciting, innovative, projects and research at the intersection of cultural heritage collections and new technologies. These talks are pitched for complete beginners – we try not to assume knowledge so that anyone from any department can come along! Workshops We programme formal courses as needed, from OpenRefine to Introduction to IIIF and everything in between. Hack & Yack Meet every third Thursday of the month 10:00-12:00 This is a casual, monthly meet up where we all take some time to have a hands-on exploration of new tools, techniques, applications. No previous experience is ever needed, these are aimed at complete beginners (we’re usually learning something new too!) and we welcome colleagues from across the Library to come have a play! Reading Group Our discussions are always open to any of our BL colleagues & students, regardless of job title or department. Discussions are regularly attended by colleagues from a range of departments including curators, reference specialists, technology, and research services. Doodle illustration of two pencils 2025 in Review In 2025 we delivered 44 events, to 297 individuals from at least 44 teams across the Library. With a total of 1055 sign ups, we provided the equivalent of 194 days of training. Doodle illustration of a hand holding up four fingers This means on average our attendees were joining us at 4 (3.55) events per year! Although, one attendee actually came along to 27 of our events! They must really love learning. Events by Quarter This is stacked bar graph which shows the breakdown of events by quarter. In Q4 (2024-2025) which covers Jan-Mar 2025 we hosted 2 workshops, 3 reading groups, 3 hack & yacks and 9 talks. In Q1 (2025-2026) which covers Apr-Jun 2025 we hosted 3 reading groups, 3 hack & yacks and 2 talks. In Q2 (2025-2026) which covers Jul-Sep 2025 we hosted 1 workshop, 2 reading groups, 1 hack & yack, and 2 talks. And in Q3 (2025-2026) which covers Oct-Dec 2025 we hosted 2 reading groups, 2 hack & yacks, and 9 talks. Where they joined from in the Library This is a donut graph with a breakdown of attendees department. It shows that 192 attendees joined from Collections, 74 joined from Operations, and 31 were unknown. Meet the Team The Digital Research Team’s mission is to enable the use of the British Library’s digital collections and data for research, inspiration, creativity, and enjoyment. We support staff all year round with a variety of exciting, digital upskilling opportunities! We are comprised of Digital Curators, Software Research Engineers and the UV Team. Doodle illustration of four sticky notes with scribbles What we’re learning for 2026 State-of-the-art OCR and Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technologies Useful machine learning and AI applications for analysing and enhancing GLAM digital collections and data The intersection of climate change + machine learning Introduction to Python for Librarians and building staff communities to support this Digital tools and methods to support the library's Anti-Racism work WikiData, WikiSource, Wikimedia Commons OpenRefine for data-wrangling Making the most of the IIIF standard Don’t just take it from us “Well-prepared, well-documented, professionally implemented…I would highly recommend the Digital Scholarship Training Programme to all colleagues. Why? Because they equip us with digital literacy. Digital literacy gives us the tools to appreciate a different scale of data, to analyse a different scale of data, and see the emerging patterns…we can ask new questions [and] actually look into practical problems.” -Andrea Deri, Cataloguer, Hungarian & Romanian"](https://www.bl.uk/images/v5dwkion/production/baea03cfde857c92bb74f29d86a83583c5ff4cfe-1587x2245.png/digital-scholarship-training-programme-infographic.png?auto=format)
