Post on 21-Aug-2020
description
The opportunistic librarian: A Leuven confessionDemmy Verbeke
Libraries and DH
acrl.ala.org/dh
(Posner 2013)
Why the Digital Humanities?
(Spiro 2011; Vandegrift – Varner 2013)
1. Provide wide access to cultural information
2. Enhance teaching and learning3. Transform scholarly communication4. Make a public impact5. Enable manipulation of data
Leiden University Library (1610)
Joe & Rika Mansueto Library, University of Chicago
Saltire Centre, Glasgow Caledonian University
The collaboration triangle
Humanities research
Information technology
Information manageme
nt
DH
R&D in libraries(Nowviskie 2013, Nowviskie 2014)
“When a library can both support basic digital scholarship needs through distributed
services and create a critical mass of staffing and intellectual energy in something like a
center (however conceived), it has set the conditions for the advancement of
knowledge itself, through the fulfillment of research desires yet unknown, un-
expressed.” (Nowviskie 2014)
Centre of expertise for:
PlagiarismCopyright
Open AccessDigital
Humanities
Academic Bibliography &
Institutional Repository
Reference librarians
A library supporting research
Institutional context
since November 2011: DH Task Force, Arts Faculty (vice dean of research, faculty librarian, head of the faculty’s computer department, research support officer of the faculty, and all interested researchers)
2014: 3 new academic positions: Tenure track professor in DH (Arts Faculty), Computer Science for DH (Department of Computer Science), Human-Media Interaction (Institute for Media Studies)
2015: Advanced Master in Digital Humanities
A library supporting DH
White paper “Digital Humanities en/in KU Leuven bibliotheken“ of the Library Council of the Humanities and Social Sciences Group
(February 2013)
intention to focus on: digitisation projects supporting relevant grant applications partnering in DH projects, from inception to
completion (and beyond) providing training in DH tools playing an expert role in the field of scholarly
communication
Project example
Portable Light Dome (“Mini-dome”)
www.arts.kuleuven.be/info/ONO/Meso/digitalisatie
Project example
RICH - Reflectance Imaging for Cultural Heritage
www.illuminare.be/rich_project
Project example
Europeana Photography
www.europeana-photography.eu
Project example
OCR/NER for 17th-, 18th- and 19th-C Dutch books
Funding: SUpport action Centre for CompEtEnce in Digitisation (
www.succeed-project.eu)
Team: Digitisation services of University Library (Diewer van der
Meijden, Mark Verbrugge, Bruno Vandermeulen) LIBIS (Sam Alloing) Arts Faculty Library (Demmy Verbeke) Student workers (Jolien Berckmans, Els Meskens)
Support:• INL (Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie)
KU Leuven & succeedgoals
End goal: integration of OCR in digitisation workflow at
KU Leuven integration of NER in digitisation workflow at
KU Leuven
Specifically: learn from digitising textual material with a
view to OCR (rather than as a representation of the book as physical object)
understand OCR possibilities learn how to enrich textual material with NER develop workflows, identify infrastructure
problems, etc.
KU Leuven & succeedcorpus
13 books from the pretiosa collection of the Gulden Librije:
- translations from Latin- monolingual Dutch (so without Latin original)- books with comparable, simple typefaces (no Gothic)- books that have not been digitized yet
Augustinus, Stad Gods (1876-8); Augustinus, Belydenis (1741); Boëthius, Vertroostinge der wysgeerte (1703);
Horatius, Over de dichtkunst (1866); Horatius, Hekeldichten en brieven (1728); Nepos, Leevens van doorlugtige mannen
(1796); Nepos, Leeven der doorluchtige veld-ooversten (1726); Ovidius, Treur-digten (1814-5); Ovidius, Treur-
gesangen (1692); Seneca, Christelycke Seneca (1705); Tacitus, Vande ghedenkwaerdige geschiedenissen der
Romeinen (1645); Vergilius, Wercken (1737); Vergilius, Aeneis (1662)
KU Leuven & succeedtools
ABBY Finereader Engine SDK 11 – OCRUser Pattern Trainer of ABBY Finereader – train OCRIMPACT historical lexicon for Dutch, integrated as a FineReader external dictionary – improve OCR
Aletheia – build ground truth
ocrevalUAtion – compare OCR results NER tool for Europeana Newspapers – NERNE Attestation Tool – manually correct NERNERT – build training & test set
Conclusion
“This is one of the great opportunity spaces that the Digital Humanities
opens up, giving archivists, librarians, and curators a chance to not simply enlarge but completely re-envision
their communities, publics, and missions.”
(Burdick et al. 2012, 48-49)
References
@viroviacumdemmy.verbeke@arts.kuleuven.
be
Anne Burdick and others, Digital_Humanities (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012)Christian Clausner, Stefan Pletschacher and Apostolos Antonacopoulos, ‘Efficient OCR Training Data Generation with Aletheia’, in Proceedings of the 11th International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS2014) <www.primaresearch.org/www/assets/papers/DAS2014_Clausner_OCRTrainingDataGeneration.pdf>William A. Kretzschmar and William Gray Potter, “Library Collaboration with Large Digital Humanities Projects,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 25, no. 4 (2010): 439–445 <doi:10.1093/llc/fqq022> Bethany Nowviskie, “Skunks in the Library: A Path to Production for Scholarly R&D,” Journal of Library Administration 53, no. 1 (2013): 53–66 <doi:10.1080/01930826.2013.756698>Bethany Nowviskie, “Asking for It,” 2014 <http://nowviskie.org/2014/asking-for-it>Miriam Posner, “Digital Humanities and the Library: A Bibliography,” 2013 <http://miriamposner.com/blog/?page_id=1033>Jennifer Schaffner and Ricky Erway, “OCLC Research Report: Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center?,” 2014 <www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2014/oclcresearch-digital-humanities-center-2014-overview.html>Ben Showers, “Does the Library Have a Role to Play in the Digital Humanities?,” 2012 <http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/02/23/does-the-library-have-a-role-to-play-in-the-digital-humanities>Lisa Spiro, “Why the Digital Humanities?,” 2011 <http://digitalscholarship.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dhglca-5.pdf>Micah Vandegrift and Stewart Varner, “Evolving in Common: Creating Mutually Supportive Relationships Between Libraries and the Digital Humanities,” Journal of Library Administration 53, no. 1 (2013): 67–78 <doi:10.1080/01930826.2013.756699>