Info Retrieval: “Supporting History Research with Temporal Topic Previews at Querying Time”

Note: The research tool discussed in the blog post is available for download on Github.
From a Post on the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) Research Blog by Dr. Jiyin He (Researcher-in-Residence at the KB Research Lab from June – October 2014.)

Being able to study primary sources is pivotal to the work of historians. Today’s mass digitization of historical records such as books, newspapers, and pamphlets now provides researchers with the opportunity to study an unprecedented amount of material without the need for physical access to archives. Access to this material is provided through search systems, however, the effectiveness of such systems seems to lag behind the major web search engines. Some of the things that make web search engines so effective are redundancy of information, that popular material is often considered relevant material, and that the preferences of other users may be used to determine what you would find relevant. These properties do not hold or are unavailable for collections of historical material.
In the past 3 months I have worked at the KB as a guest researcher. Together with Dr. Samuël Kruizinga, a historian, we explored how we can enhance the search system at KB to assist the search challenges of the historian. In this blogpost, I will share our experience of working together, the system we have developed, as well as lessons learnt during this project.

Read the Complete Blog Post ||| Download Tool

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