Datasets:
Tasks:
Text Classification
Modalities:
Text
Sub-tasks:
multi-class-classification
Languages:
English
Size:
10K - 100K
License:
davanstrien HF Staff
Add dataset card body: description, subsets, model link, citation, limitations (#2)
f4c8478 metadata
license: cc0-1.0
pretty_name: BL Books Genre
language:
- en
task_categories:
- text-classification
task_ids:
- multi-class-classification
tags:
- lam
- GLAM
- 19th-century
- books
- british-library
- living-with-machines
dataset_info:
- config_name: annotated_raw
features:
- name: BL record ID
dtype: string
- name: Name
dtype: string
- name: Dates associated with name
dtype: string
- name: Type of name
dtype: string
- name: Role
dtype: string
- name: All names
list: string
- name: Title
dtype: string
- name: Variant titles
dtype: string
- name: Series title
dtype: string
- name: Number within series
dtype: string
- name: Country of publication
list: string
- name: Place of publication
list: string
- name: Publisher
dtype: string
- name: Date of publication
dtype: string
- name: Edition
dtype: string
- name: Physical description
dtype: string
- name: Dewey classification
dtype: string
- name: BL shelfmark
dtype: string
- name: Topics
dtype: string
- name: Genre
dtype: string
- name: Languages
list: string
- name: Notes
dtype: string
- name: BL record ID for physical resource
dtype: string
- name: classification_id
dtype: string
- name: user_id
dtype: string
- name: subject_ids
dtype: string
- name: annotator_date_pub
dtype: string
- name: annotator_normalised_date_pub
dtype: string
- name: annotator_edition_statement
dtype: string
- name: annotator_FAST_genre_terms
dtype: string
- name: annotator_FAST_subject_terms
dtype: string
- name: annotator_comments
dtype: string
- name: annotator_main_language
dtype: string
- name: annotator_other_languages_summaries
dtype: string
- name: annotator_summaries_language
dtype: string
- name: annotator_translation
dtype: string
- name: annotator_original_language
dtype: string
- name: annotator_publisher
dtype: string
- name: annotator_place_pub
dtype: string
- name: annotator_country
dtype: string
- name: annotator_title
dtype: string
- name: Link to digitised book
dtype: string
- name: annotated
dtype: bool
- name: Type of resource
dtype:
class_label:
names:
'0': Monograph
'1': Serial
- name: created_at
dtype: timestamp[s]
- name: annotator_genre
dtype:
class_label:
names:
'0': Fiction
'1': Can't tell
'2': Non-fiction
'3': The book contains both Fiction and Non-Fiction
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 3582954
num_examples: 4398
download_size: 985607
dataset_size: 3582954
- config_name: raw
features:
- name: BL record ID
dtype: string
- name: Name
dtype: string
- name: Dates associated with name
dtype: string
- name: Type of name
dtype: string
- name: Role
dtype: string
- name: All names
list: string
- name: Title
dtype: string
- name: Variant titles
dtype: string
- name: Series title
dtype: string
- name: Number within series
dtype: string
- name: Country of publication
list: string
- name: Place of publication
list: string
- name: Publisher
dtype: string
- name: Date of publication
dtype: string
- name: Edition
dtype: string
- name: Physical description
dtype: string
- name: Dewey classification
dtype: string
- name: BL shelfmark
dtype: string
- name: Topics
dtype: string
- name: Genre
dtype: string
- name: Languages
list: string
- name: Notes
dtype: string
- name: BL record ID for physical resource
dtype: string
- name: classification_id
dtype: string
- name: user_id
dtype: string
- name: subject_ids
dtype: string
- name: annotator_date_pub
dtype: string
- name: annotator_normalised_date_pub
dtype: string
- name: annotator_edition_statement
dtype: string
- name: annotator_FAST_genre_terms
dtype: string
- name: annotator_FAST_subject_terms
dtype: string
- name: annotator_comments
dtype: string
- name: annotator_main_language
dtype: string
- name: annotator_other_languages_summaries
dtype: string
- name: annotator_summaries_language
dtype: string
- name: annotator_translation
dtype: string
- name: annotator_original_language
dtype: string
- name: annotator_publisher
dtype: string
- name: annotator_place_pub
dtype: string
- name: annotator_country
dtype: string
- name: annotator_title
dtype: string
- name: Link to digitised book
dtype: string
- name: annotated
dtype: bool
- name: Type of resource
dtype:
class_label:
names:
'0': Monograph
'1': Serial
'2': Monographic component part
- name: created_at
dtype: string
- name: annotator_genre
dtype: string
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 27517664
num_examples: 55343
download_size: 10767714
dataset_size: 27517664
- config_name: title_genre_classifiction
features:
- name: BL record ID
dtype: string
- name: title
dtype: string
- name: label
dtype:
class_label:
names:
'0': Fiction
'1': Non-fiction
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 187592
num_examples: 1736
download_size: 116943
dataset_size: 187592
configs:
- config_name: annotated_raw
data_files:
- split: train
path: annotated_raw/train-*
- config_name: raw
data_files:
- split: train
path: raw/train-*
- config_name: title_genre_classifiction
data_files:
- split: train
path: title_genre_classifiction/train-*
BL Books Genre
A dataset of metadata records for British Library digitised books with crowdsourced genre annotations (fiction / non-fiction). Created as part of the Living with Machines project.
A model trained on this dataset is available at TheBritishLibrary/bl-books-genre (DistilBERT, ~0.94 accuracy on the held-out test set).
Subsets
This dataset has three configurations:
| Config | Rows | Use |
|---|---|---|
title_genre_classifiction |
1,736 | Curated title → fiction/non-fiction training set used to train TheBritishLibrary/bl-books-genre. Start here for classification tasks. |
annotated_raw |
4,398 | All Zooniverse-annotated records, including ambiguous cases (Can't tell, both fiction and non-fiction). Useful for reproducing annotation analysis. |
raw |
55,343 | The full set of BL digitised book metadata records (annotated and unannotated). Useful for inference at scale or for sampling additional candidates. |
Source materials
- Records: British Library catalogue metadata for digitised 18th–19th century books
- Annotations: Volunteer labels gathered through Zooniverse crowdsourcing, curated by the Living with Machines team
- Tutorial / replication notebook: Living with Machines genre-classification tutorial
Limitations & caveats
- Time period bias: heavily weighted toward the later 19th century (mean publication year ~1864, median ~1877; range covers 16th–early 20th century but mostly 19th)
- Language bias: ~22,987 English-language titles vs. <500 titles in any single other language. Non-English performance is unreliable.
- Cataloguing conventions: titles follow British Library cataloguing standards; titles from other catalogues may behave differently
- Annotation provenance: a portion of the curated training subset uses Snorkel weak labels rather than human annotation alone
Validate on your own corpus before relying on a trained model.
Citation
If you use this dataset, please cite the Living with Machines project:
@misc{vanstrien_lwm_genre,
author = {van Strien, Daniel and Tolfo, Giorgia and Morris, Victoria and Beelen, Kaspar},
title = {Genre Classification of British Library 19th-Century Books},
publisher = {Living with Machines / The Alan Turing Institute / British Library},
url = {https://living-with-machines.github.io/genre-classification/}
}
Related
- Trained model:
TheBritishLibrary/bl-books-genre - Project: Living with Machines
- British Library digitised collections: https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/digital-collections
License
CC0-1.0 — the metadata is in the public domain. See the British Library's open metadata strategy.