Digital scholarship

Undertake innovative research with our digital collections and data with the help of our Digital Research experts.

Collection guides

How to find and use the British Library's IIIF enabled images
This collection guide will enable you to find and use our digitised collection items that are IIIF enabled.
Digitised printed books (16th–19th centuries) with Google Books
British Library printed collection items digitised in partnership with Google Books
Digitised printed books (18th-19th century)
Over 60,000 out-of-copyright digitised books from the 18th and 19th century available for viewing, search, download and digital research.
Digital mapping
Geospatial data, cartographic applications, digital aerial photography and scanned-in historic map materials
Datasets
Bibliographic datasets relating to our published and archival holdings.
UK Web Archive
Preserved web resources of scholarly and cultural importance from the UK domain

Help

Four people gathered around a monitor for a lesson, with laptops in front of them

Digital Research

The Digital Scholarship Department works to enable innovative research based on the British Library's digital collections through:

Getting content in digital form and online
Collaborative projects
Offering digital research support and guidance
Events, competitions, and awards

Our team of cross disciplinary experts in the areas of digitisation, librarianship, digital history & humanities, computer and data science, are here to help you with your digital research.

Contact us at digitalresearch@bl.uk

Twitter: @BL_DigiSchol

Mastodon: @BL_DigiSchol@techhub.social

Case studies

More Case studies

Graham Jevon, Cataloguer, Endangered Archives Programme

…'The Digital Scholarship Training Programme has introduced me to new software, opened my eyes to digital opportunities, provided inspiration for me to improve, and helped me attain new skills'…

Learn about Graham Jevon's journey through the Digital Scholarship Training Programme and catch up on where he is now.

Computing for Culture Heritage laptop with books

…“I have gone from not being able to print 'hello' in Python to writing some relatively complex programs and having a much greater understanding of data science and how it is applicable to my work."…

A selection of student projects undertaken as part of a one-year part-time postgraduate Certificate (PGCert), Computing for Cultural Heritage, 2019-2021 trial co-developed by British Library, National Archives and Birkbeck University and funded by the Institute of Coding as part of a £4.8 million University skills drive.

…I have particularly enjoyed developing new knowledge of the Library’s web archiving work.…

Exploring the challenges and opportunities of collecting interactive web-based works.

…I have most enjoyed the collaborative atmosphere of learning at the Library.…

AHRC Innovation Placement Fellow

…Data visualisation tools allowed me to present a new perspective on the EAP projects in Africa…

Data visualisation tools allowed me to present a new perspective on the EAP projects in Africa.

Image of Alastair Horne recipient of British Library Mobile Fiction CDP

…Working with the British Library has enabled me to get my research out there beyond academia.…

How smartphones are changing storytelling: Alastair Horne, PhD student.

Blog posts

Webinar on Open Scholarship in GLAMs through Research Repositories

Thursday, May 4, 2023

If you work in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector and want to learn more about research repositories, then join us on 18th May, Thursday for an online repository training session for cultural heritage professionals. This event is...

Detecting Catalogue Entries in Printed Catalogue Data

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

This is a guest blog post by Isaac Dunford, MEng Computer Science student at the University of Southampton. Isaac reports on his Digital Humanities internship project supervised by Dr James Baker. Introduction The purpose of this project has been to...

Repository Training Day in Cardiff: Research in GLAM and research repositories to facilitate open scholarship activities for cultural heritage organisations

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

If you work in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector and want to learn more about research repositories, then register for a hybrid repository training day for cultural heritage professionals hosted by the National Museum Cardiff in Wales...

Topics in contemporary Digital Scholarship via five years of our Reading Group

Monday, April 3, 2023

Since March 2016, the Digital Scholarship Reading Group at the British Library has discussed articles, videos, podcasts, blog posts and chapters that touch on digital scholarship in libraries. I've shared our readings up to May 2018 and taken a thematic...