Paper published in a book (Scientific congresses, symposiums and conference proceedings)
Machine Learning to Geographically Enrich Understudied Sources: A Conceptual Approach
VIOLA, Lorella; Verheul, Jaap
2020 • In Rocha, Ana; Steels, Luc; van den Herik, Jaap (Eds.) Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ARTIDIGH
[en] This paper discusses the added value of applying machine learning (ML) to contextually enrich digital collections. In this study, we employed ML as a method to geographically enrich historical datasets. Specifically, we used a sequence tagging tool (Riedl and Padó 2018) which implements TensorFlow to perform NER on a corpus of historical immigrant newspapers. Afterwards, the entities were extracted and geocoded. The aim was to prepare large quantities of unstructured data for a conceptual historical analysis of geographical references. The intention was to develop a method that would assist researchers working in spatial humanities, a recently emerged interdisciplinary field focused on geographic and conceptual space. Here we describe the ML methodology and the geocoding phase of the project, focussing on the advantages and challenges of this approach, particularly for humanities scholars. We also argue that, by choosing to use largely neglected sources such as immigrant newspapers (a lso known as ethnic newspapers), this study contributes to the debate about diversity representation and archival biases in digital practices.
Research center :
- Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) > Digital History & Historiography (DHI)
Disciplines :
Engineering, computing & technology: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Author, co-author :
VIOLA, Lorella ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH)
Verheul, Jaap; Universiteit Utrecht > History and Art History
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
Machine Learning to Geographically Enrich Understudied Sources: A Conceptual Approach
Publication date :
2020
Event name :
12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence
Event place :
Valletta, Malta
Event date :
from 22-02-2020 to 24-02-2020
Audience :
International
Main work title :
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ARTIDIGH
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