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Article
Publication date: 11 April 2022

Richard A. Hawkins

This study aims to highlight the potential of digitised historic newspapers.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to highlight the potential of digitised historic newspapers.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is a review of digitised historic newspapers as a primary source for marketing historians. It provides a survey of what is available internationally free of charge to the user. It also includes examples of the use of digitised historic newspapers drawn from the author’s own research.

Findings

The paper reveals the huge potential for marketing historians of what is now available in a growing number of countries across the world. Much of this material is available free of charge to researchers with a connection to the internet.

Originality/value

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to explore digitised historic newspapers as a primary source for marketing historians.

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. 14 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 February 2023

Dilawar Ali, Kenzo Milleville, Steven Verstockt, Nico Van de Weghe, Sally Chambers and Julie M. Birkholz

Historical newspaper collections provide a wealth of information about the past. Although the digitization of these collections significantly improves their accessibility, a large…

Abstract

Purpose

Historical newspaper collections provide a wealth of information about the past. Although the digitization of these collections significantly improves their accessibility, a large portion of digitized historical newspaper collections, such as those of KBR, the Royal Library of Belgium, are not yet searchable at article-level. However, recent developments in AI-based research methods, such as document layout analysis, have the potential for further enriching the metadata to improve the searchability of these historical newspaper collections. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors explore how existing computer vision and machine learning approaches can be used to improve access to digitized historical newspapers. To do this, the authors propose a workflow, using computer vision and machine learning approaches to (1) provide article-level access to digitized historical newspaper collections using document layout analysis, (2) extract specific types of articles (e.g. feuilletons – literary supplements from Le Peuple from 1938), (3) conduct image similarity analysis using (un)supervised classification methods and (4) perform named entity recognition (NER) to link the extracted information to open data.

Findings

The results show that the proposed workflow improves the accessibility and searchability of digitized historical newspapers, and also contributes to the building of corpora for digital humanities research. The AI-based methods enable automatic extraction of feuilletons, clustering of similar images and dynamic linking of related articles.

Originality/value

The proposed workflow enables automatic extraction of articles, including detection of a specific type of article, such as a feuilleton or literary supplement. This is particularly valuable for humanities researchers as it improves the searchability of these collections and enables corpora to be built around specific themes. Article-level access to, and improved searchability of, KBR's digitized newspapers are demonstrated through the online tool (https://tw06v072.ugent.be/kbr/).

Book part
Publication date: 12 July 2023

Sahan Savas Karatasli

This paper discusses data-collection strategies that use digitized historical newspaper archives to study social conflicts and social movements from a global and historical

Abstract

This paper discusses data-collection strategies that use digitized historical newspaper archives to study social conflicts and social movements from a global and historical perspective focusing on nationalist movements. I present an analysis of State-Seeking Nationalist Movements (SSNMs) dataset I, which includes news articles reporting on state-seeking activities throughout the world from 1804 to 2013 using the New York Times and the Guardian/Observer. In discussing this new source of data and its relative value, I explain the various benefits and challenges involved with using digitized historical newspaper archives for world-historical analysis of social movements. I also introduce strategies that can be used to detect and minimize some potential sources of bias. I demonstrate the utility of the strategies introduced in this paper by assessing the reliability of the SSNM dataset I and by comparing it to alternative datasets. The analysis presented in the paper also compares the labor-intensive manual data-coding strategies to automated approaches. In doing so, it explains why labor-intensive manual coding strategies will continue to be an invaluable tool for world-historical sociologists in a world of big data.

Details

Methodological Advances in Research on Social Movements, Conflict, and Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-887-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 October 2017

Johan Jarlbrink and Pelle Snickars

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the digitized newspaper collection at the National Library of Sweden, focusing on cultural heritage as digital noise. In what…

2910

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the digitized newspaper collection at the National Library of Sweden, focusing on cultural heritage as digital noise. In what specific ways are newspapers transformed in the digitization process? If the digitized document is not the same as the source document – is it still a historical record, or is it transformed into something else?

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have analyzed the XML files from Aftonbladet 1830 to 1862. The most frequent newspaper words not matching a high-quality references corpus were selected to zoom in on the noisiest part of the paper. The variety of the interpretations generated by optical character recognition (OCR) was examined, as well as texts generated by auto-segmentation. The authors have made a limited ethnographic study of the digitization process.

Findings

The research shows that the digital collection of Aftonbladet contains extreme amounts of noise: millions of misinterpreted words generated by OCR, and millions of texts re-edited by the auto-segmentation tool. How the tools work is mostly unknown to the staff involved in the digitization process? Sticking to any idea of a provenance chain is hence impossible, since many steps have been outsourced to unknown factors affecting the source document.

Originality/value

The detail examination of digitally transformed newspapers is valuable to scholars depending on newspaper databases in their research. The paper also highlights the fact that libraries outsourcing digitization processes run the risk of losing control over the quality of their collections.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 73 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 23 May 2023

Kimmo Kettunen, Heikki Keskustalo, Sanna Kumpulainen, Tuula Pääkkönen and Juha Rautiainen

This study aims to identify user perception of different qualities of optical character recognition (OCR) in texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of different…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to identify user perception of different qualities of optical character recognition (OCR) in texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of different quality OCR on users' subjective perception through an interactive information retrieval task with a collection of one digitized historical Finnish newspaper.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on the simulated work task model used in interactive information retrieval. Thirty-two users made searches to an article collection of Finnish newspaper Uusi Suometar 1869–1918 which consists of ca. 1.45 million autosegmented articles. The article search database had two versions of each article with different quality OCR. Each user performed six pre-formulated and six self-formulated short queries and evaluated subjectively the top 10 results using a graded relevance scale of 0–3. Users were not informed about the OCR quality differences of the otherwise identical articles.

Findings

The main result of the study is that improved OCR quality affects subjective user perception of historical newspaper articles positively: higher relevance scores are given to better-quality texts.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this simulated interactive work task experiment is the first one showing empirically that users' subjective relevance assessments are affected by a change in the quality of an optically read text.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 79 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 November 2019

Chinmay Tumbe

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of corpus linguistics and digitised newspaper archives in management and organisational history.

1181

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of corpus linguistics and digitised newspaper archives in management and organisational history.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws its inferences from Google NGram Viewer and five digitised historical newspaper databases – The Times of India, The Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal – that contain prints from the nineteenth century.

Findings

The paper argues that corpus linguistics or the quantitative and qualitative analysis of large-scale real-world machine-readable text can be an important method of historical research in management studies, especially for discourse analysis. It shows how this method can be fruitfully used for research in management and organisational history, using term count and cluster analysis. In particular, historical databases of digitised newspapers serve as important corpora to understand the evolution of specific words and concepts. Corpus linguistics using newspaper archives can potentially serve as a method for periodisation and triangulation in corporate, analytically structured and serial histories and also foster cross-country comparisons in the evolution of management concepts.

Research limitations/implications

The paper also shows the limitation of the research method and potential robustness checks while using the method.

Practical implications

Findings of this paper can stimulate new ways of conducting research in management history.

Originality/value

The paper for the first time introduces corpus linguistics as a research method in management history.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 25 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 15 September 2021

Elina Late and Sanna Kumpulainen

The paper examines academic historians' information interactions with material from digital historical-newspaper collections as the research process unfolds.

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Abstract

Purpose

The paper examines academic historians' information interactions with material from digital historical-newspaper collections as the research process unfolds.

Design/methodology/approach

The study employed qualitative analysis from in-depth interviews with Finnish history scholars who use digitised historical newspapers as primary sources for their research. A model for task-based information interaction guided the collection and analysis of data.

Findings

The study revealed numerous information interactions within activities related to task-planning, the search process, selecting and working with the items and synthesis and reporting. The information interactions differ with the activities involved, which call for system support mechanisms specific to each activity type. Various activities feature information search, which is an essential research method for those using digital collections in the compilation and analysis of data. Furthermore, application of quantitative methods and multidisciplinary collaboration may be shaping culture in history research toward convergence with the research culture of the natural sciences.

Originality/value

For sustainable digital humanities infrastructure and digital collections, it is of great importance that system designers understand how the collections are accessed, why and their use in the real-world context. The study enriches understanding of the collections' utilisation and advances a theoretical framework for explicating task-based information interaction.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 November 2007

Shien‐Chiang Yu

The purpose of this study is to discuss the concepts of digital rights management (DRM) of archives of historical newspapers and the design of a DRM framework to render the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to discuss the concepts of digital rights management (DRM) of archives of historical newspapers and the design of a DRM framework to render the content of historical news under the rights of authority.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper takes the form of a literature review and system analysis.

Findings

The rights management of digital objects involves various levels of application techniques and standards which are more complex than physical ones. This study combines the advantages of both tethered and untethered models to manage the digital rights of historical newspapers. It not only simplifies the management system, but also guarantees the rights when users use different platforms to present these digital objects.

Originality/value

This study designs a simplified DRM framework to protect the rights of digitized contents and to practise the rights scope of online grant for a historical newspaper.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 25 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 February 2017

Richard A. Hawkins

This paper explores the development of a luxury retail shoe brand in Belle Époque Vienna.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper explores the development of a luxury retail shoe brand in Belle Époque Vienna.

Design/methodology/approach

Footwear retailing and marketing history is a neglected area. Unfortunately, no business records have survived from Robert Schlesinger’s shoe stores. However, it has been possible to reconstruct the history of the development of the Paprika Schlesinger brand from its extensive advertising in the Viennese newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse, with the guidance of the founder’s grandson, Prof Robert A. Shaw, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Birkbeck, University of London, England. This case study would not have been possible without the digitization of some major collections of primary sources. In 2014, the European Union’s Europeana digitization initiative launched a new portal via the Library of Europe website which provides access to selected digitized historic newspaper collections in libraries across Europe. The project partners include the Austrian National Library which has digitized full runs of several major historic Austrian newspapers, including the Neue Freie Presse. Other project partners which have digitized historic newspapers which are relevant to this paper are the Landesbibliothek Dr Friedrich Teßmann of Italy’s Südtirol region, the National Library of France and the Berlin State Library. An associate project partner library, the Slovenian National and University Library’s Digital Library of Slovenia, has also digitized relevant historic newspapers. Furthermore, the City of Vienna has digitized a complete set of Vienna city directories as part of its Wienbibliothek Digital project.

Findings

This paper suggests that Robert Schlesinger created one of the first European luxury retail shoe brands.

Originality/value

This is the first academic study of the historical development of the advertising and marketing of a European luxury retail shoe brand.

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 12 July 2023

Abstract

Details

Methodological Advances in Research on Social Movements, Conflict, and Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-887-7

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