65 people from 17 countries - from Albania to Zimbabwe - participated in the EIFL webinar on text and data mining.

Text and data mining of large datasets is often described as the new frontier for science and research, and the high attendance at the webinar illustrates just what a hot topic this is for librarians in EIFL-partner countries.

Benjamin White (Head of Intellectual Property at the British Library) provided a clear introduction to what text and data mining is, and how it differs from other methods of information retrieval - for example online search engines.

He discussed the copyright framework, and the changes needed so that libraries can help researchers to advance knowledge.  He also covered how text and data mining impacts on licence agreements with publishers.

After Benjamin's presentation, Ben O’Steen (a researcher in the area of digital scholarship at the British Library) talked from personal experience about how text and data mining is transforming research.

The presentations were followed by an interesting question and answer session that included lots of questions from participants from Africa.

The webinar was hosted by the EIFL-Licensing Programme and the EIFL-IP (Copyright and Libraries) Programme.

Text and data mining featured in the Trends to Watch session at the EIFL General Assembly 2013 that introduced topics librarians should be following.

• View the recording
• Download the presentation slides in PDF format (1.34MB)
• Download the presentation slides in Powerpoint format (1.31MB)
• View the presentation slides on Slideshare
• View the EIFL Draft Law on Copyright that has an exception for text and data mining
• View the EIFL Model Licences (which include a new clause on text and data mining)