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Using digital corpora for preserving and processing cultural heritage texts: a case study

Eleni Galiotou (Department of Informatics, Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Athens, Greece)

Library Review

ISSN: 0024-2535

Article publication date: 26 August 2014

659

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the creation and exploitation of a historical corpus in an attempt to contribute to the preservation and availability of cultural heritage documents.

Design/methodology/approach

At first, the digitization process and attempts to the availability and awareness of the books and manuscripts in a historical library in Greece are presented. Then, processing and exploitation, taking into account natural language processing techniques of the digitized corpus, are discussed.

Findings

In the course of the project, methods that take into account the state of the documents and the particularities of the Greek language were developed.

Practical implications

In its present state, the use of the corpus facilitates the work of theologians, historians, philologists, paleographers, etc. and in the same time, prevents the original documents from further damage.

Originality/value

The results of this undertaking can give useful insights as for the creation of corpora of cultural heritage documents and as for the methods for the processing and exploitation of the digitized documents which take into account the language in which the documents are written.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2nd International Conference on Integrated Information, IC-ININFO, held in Budapest, Hungary, from 30 August to 2 September, 2012, http://history.icininfo.net/2012/

Citation

Galiotou, E. (2014), "Using digital corpora for preserving and processing cultural heritage texts: a case study", Library Review, Vol. 63 No. 6/7, pp. 408-421. https://doi.org/10.1108/LR-11-2013-0142

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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