Academic literature on the topic 'Annotation of historical document scans'

Geographical and taxonomical referencing of specimens and documented species observations from within and across natural history collections is vital for ongoing species research. However, much of the historical data such as field books, diaries and specimens, are challenging to work with. They are computationally inaccessable, refer to historical place names and taxonomies, and are written in a variety of languages. In order to address these challenges and elucidate historical species observation data, we developed a workflow to (i) crowd-source semantic annotations from handwritten species observations, (ii) transform them into RDF (Resource Description Framework) and (iii) store and link them in a knowledge base. Instead of full-transcription we directly annotate digital field books scans with key concepts that are based on Darwin Core standards. Our workflow stresses the importance of verbatim annotation. The interpretation of the historical content, such a resolving a historical taxon to a current one, can be done by individual researchers after the content is published as linked open data. Through the storage of annotion provenance, who created the annotation and when, we allow multiple interpretations of the content to exist in parallel, stimulating scientific discourse. The semantic annotation process is supported by a web application, the Semantic Field Book (SFB)-Annotator, driven by an application ontology. The ontology formally describes the content and meta-data required to semantically annotate species observations. It is based on the Darwin Core standard (DwC), Uberon and the Geonames ontology. The provenance of annotations is stored using the Web Annotation Data Model. Adhering to the principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable & Reusable) and Linked Open Data, the content of the specimen collections can be interpreted homogeneously and aggregated across datasets. This work is part of the Making Sense project: makingsenseproject.org. The project aims to disclose the content of a natural history collection: a 17,000 page account of the exploration of the Indonesian Archipelago between 1820 and 1850 (Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlands-Indie) With a knowledge base, researchers are given easy access to the primary sources of natural history collections. For their research, they can aggregate species observations, construct rich queries to browse through the data and add their own interpretations regarding the meaning of the historical content.

Abstract Among the Arabic manuscripts preserved in the Alberto Bombace Central Library of the Sicilian Region in Palermo there is an anonymous and acephalous document, the ms. III.C.4., which provides, as its only identification signs, the shelf-mark S.M.43., indicating that it used to belong to the Library of the Benedictine Abbey of San Martino delle Scale, and a cursory Italian explanatory annotation provided in 1796 by the Archbishop of Aleppo. As a preliminary step toward the critical analysis of the above-mentioned document, which will be the subject of further study, this paper will attempt to provide a codicological description of the manuscript together with a philological and historical reconstruction of its arrival to the Central Library of the Sicilian Region.

This article describes the investigation of selected primary sources regarding the Battle of Çanakkale (Battle of Gallipoli) which occurred in the year 1915 in the Ottoman era, in addition to compiling a holistic annotation of the sources. Analysis of the narrative in this research gives meaning to the portrayal and description of the lesson aspect of narration from the records of the selected sources. The purpose of this research is to analyze and scrutinize the selected primary sources and the annotation to the Battle of Çanakkale 1915. The whole research used a qualitative approach through historical and content analysis design. Research data was gathered using document analysis and scrutiny of the selected primary sources. Data analysis in this research used an internal and external critique approach. Research findings conclude that in the acquisition of resources, there was a void relating to the Battle of Çanakkale 1915, especially in the Malay language as reflected from the native’s perspective. Hence, this research took the initiative to focus on the aspect of analyzing the narrative of the Battle of Çanakkale 1915 of some selected primary sources in the English language. This investigation was holistically conducted by scrutinizing the annotations of reference materials categorized as authoritative for the history of the Battle of Çanakkale 1915. Analysis of annotation was done on ten (10) materials for the category of war records (primary) randomly selected. This research can contribute to facilitating a search for sources relating to the Battle of Çanakkale 1915, especially authoritative primary sources. It can indirectly elevate the field of Muslim military history, particularly of the Ottoman era, to researchers of Islamic history and civilization corpus. In addition, a reference list in the Malay language for the Battle of Çanakkale 1915 was compiled in order to fill the void mentioned.

This paper examines the interior as a condition that is continuously in production through the arrangement of objects and furniture. This is done along two lines of inquiry. First by examining a few different historical and contemporary conceptions of the domestic interior through the lens of architectural representation. Second by using the technique of laser scanning to document a number of inhabited interiors in two apartment buildings. Through a series of representations, or cloud drawings, produced from the scans, the paper presents three ways of reading the interior: as environments, as assemblies, and as materialities. Departing from Robin Evans’ writing on drawing techniques for representing the interior and their correlation to ways of inhabitation, the paper poses questions around how the understanding of the interior may shift when using emerging techniques for architectural representation. Through readings of Walter Benjamin as well as Sylvia Lavin, the paper discusses such shifts in relation to changes in the conception of the interior and the objects that it contains.

The Laonikos Chalkokondyles' historical work refers extensively to the socialand political situation of western-european populations in the late medieval era. Thedescription of the Italian peninsula as a geopolitical unity has a main position in thisnarration.This article tries to underpin the special importance, which Laonikos Chalkokondylesattached to the description of the political situation of the Italian cities-states.Apart from this, it makes an effort to document this historiographical selection.Chalkokondyles of course keeps systematically a distance from the events.However, the way that was used by one of the last Byzantine historians in order tomaintain the political system of Italian cities, proves his strong interest about it. Thisinterest is revealed by having a critic spirit and highlighting the possitive sides ofeach regime. It is, also, revealed by expounding at great length. It is significant thatthose features didn't exist in his references to the other european societies.The structure used in this topic is the following:The basic part is an annotation to Chalkokondyles' references regarding thepolitical organisation in the main four city-states, Venice, Genoa, Florence and Milan.The topic is framed by two introductive chapters and conclusions as an epilogue. In thechapters mentioned, Chalkokondyles is incorporated in his contemporary backround.In the same part the Italian urban milieux on the borderline of 14th and 15th centuriesis basicaly described.In the conclusions the central aspect that runs through the way of theChalkokondylean descriptions of Italian cities, is restructed. It is also undertaken toexplain this way from the political view of the historian and his relationship with thatgroup of Despotate of Morea which was friendly to the West.

Current information retrieval systems are limited to text in documents for helping users with their information needs. With the progress in the field of natural language processing, there now exists the possibility of enriching large document collections with accurate semantic annotations. Annotations in the form of part-of-speech tags, temporal expressions, numerical values, geographic locations, and other named entities can help us look at terms in text with additional semantics. This doctoral dissertation presents methods for search and analysis of large semantically annotated document collections. Concretely, we make contributions along three broad directions: indexing, querying, and mining of large semantically annotated document collections. Indexing Annotated Document Collections. Knowledge-centric tasks such as information extraction, question answering, and relationship extraction require a user to retrieve text regions within documents that detail relationships between entities. Current search systems are ill-equipped to handle such tasks, as they can only provide phrase querying with Boolean operators. To enable knowledge acquisition at scale, we propose gyani, an indexing infrastructure for knowledge-centric tasks. gyani enables search for structured query patterns by allowing regular expression operators to be expressed between word sequences and semantic annotations. To implement grep-like search capabilities over large annotated document collections, we present a data model and index design choices involving word sequences, annotations, and their combinations. We show that by using our proposed indexing infrastructure we bring about drastic speedups in crucial knowledge-centric tasks: 95× in information extraction, 53× in question answering, and 12× in relationship extraction. Hyper-phrase queries are multi-phrase set queries that naturally arise when attempting to spot knowledge graph facts or subgraphs in large document collections. An example hyper-phrase query for the fact 〈mahatma gandhi, nominated for, nobel peace prize〉 is: 〈{ mahatma gandhi, m k gandhi, gandhi }, { nominated, nominee, nomination received }, { nobel peace prize, nobel prize for peace, nobel prize in peace }〉. Efficient execution of hyper-phrase queries is of essence when attempting to verify and validate claims concerning named entities or emerging named entities. To do so, it is required that the fact concerning the entity can be contextualized in text. To acquire text regions given a hyper-phrase query, we propose a retrieval framework using combinations of n-gram and skip-gram indexes. Concretely, we model the combinatorial space of the phrases in the hyper-phrase query to be retrieved using vertical and horizontal operators and propose a dynamic programming approach for optimized query processing. We show that using our proposed optimizations we can retrieve sentences in support of knowledge graph facts and subgraphs from large document collections within seconds. Querying Annotated Document Collections. Users often struggle to convey their information needs in short keyword queries. This often results in a series of query reformulations, in an attempt to find relevant documents. To assist users navigate large document collections and lead them to their information needs with ease, we propose methods that leverage semantic annotations. As a first step, we focus on temporal information needs. Specifically, we leverage temporal expressions in large document collections to serve time-sensitive queries better. Time-sensitive queries, e.g., summer olympics implicitly carry a temporal dimension for document retrieval. To help users explore longitudinal document collections, we propose a method that generates time intervals of interest as query reformulations. For instance, for the query world war , time intervals of interest are: [1914; 1918] and [1939;1945]. The generated time intervals are immediately useful in search-related tasks such as temporal query classification and temporal diversification of documents. As a second and final step, we focus on helping the user in navigating large document collections by generating semantic aspects. The aspects are generated using semantic annotations in the form of temporal expressions, geographic locations, and other named entities. Concretely, we propose the xFactor algorithm that generates semantic aspects in two steps. In the first step, xFactor computes the salience of annotations in models informed of their semantics. Thus, the temporal expressions 1930s and 1939 are considered similar as well as entities such as usain bolt and justin gatlin are considered related when computing their salience. Second, the xFactor algorithm computes the co-occurrence salience of annotations belonging to different types by using an efficient partitioning procedure. For instance, the aspect 〈{usain bolt}, {beijing, London}, [2008;2012]〉 signifies that the entity, locations, and the time interval are observed frequently in isolation as well as together in the documents retrieved for the query olympic medalists. Mining Annotated Document Collections. Large annotated document collections are a treasure trove of historical information concerning events and entities. In this regard, we first present EventMiner, a clustering algorithm, that mines events for keyword queries by using annotations in the form of temporal expressions, geographic locations, and other disambiguated named entities present in a pseudo-relevant set of documents. EventMiner aggregates the annotation evidences by mathematically modeling their semantics. Temporal expressions are modeled in an uncertainty and proximity-aware time model. Geographic locations are modeled as minimum bounding rectangles over their geographic co-ordinates. Other disambiguated named entities are modeled as a set of links corresponding to their Wikipedia articles. For a set of history-oriented queries concerning entities and events, we show that our approach can truly identify event clusters when compared to approaches that disregard annotation semantics. Second and finally, we present jigsaw, an end-to-end query-driven system that generates structured tables for user-defined schema from unstructured text. To define the table schema, we describe query operators that help perform structured search on annotated text and fill in table cell values. To resolve table cell values whose values can not be retrieved, we describe methods for inferring null values using local context. jigsaw further relies on semantic models for text and numbers to link together near-duplicate rows. This way, jigsaw is able to piece together paraphrased, partial, and redundant text regions retrieved in response to structured queries to generate high-quality tables within seconds. This doctoral dissertation was supervised by Klaus Berberich at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and htw saar in Saarbrücken, Germany. This thesis is available online at: https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~dhgupta/pub/dhruv-thesis.pdf.

PurposeDigital tools have been used to document cultural heritage with high-quality imaging and metadata. However, some of the historical assets are totally or partially unlabeled and some are physically damaged, which decreases their attractiveness and induces loss of value. This paper introduces a new framework that aims at tackling the cultural data enrichment challenge using machine learning.Design/methodology/approachThis framework focuses on the automatic annotation and metadata completion through new deep learning classification and annotation methods. It also addresses issues related to physically damaged heritage objects through a new image reconstruction approach based on supervised and unsupervised learning.FindingsThe authors evaluate approaches on a data set of cultural objects collected from various cultural institutions around the world. For annotation and classification part of this study, the authors proposed and implemented a hierarchical multimodal classifier that improves the quality of annotation and increases the accuracy of the model, thanks to the introduction of multitask multimodal learning. Regarding cultural data visual reconstruction, the proposed clustering-based method, which combines supervised and unsupervised learning is found to yield better quality completion than existing inpainting frameworks.Originality/valueThis research work is original in sense that it proposes new approaches for the cultural data enrichment, and to the authors’ knowledge, none of the existing enrichment approaches focus on providing an integrated framework based on machine learning to solve current challenges in cultural heritage. These challenges, which are identified by the authors are related to metadata annotation and visual reconstruction.

The stele belongs to a funerary monument erected in the agora of Megara in honour of soldiers fallen in the Persian Wars (480-479 BC). The inscription is made of three portions of text: a prose introduction, an epigram in elegiacs, and a final prose annotation. According to the introduction, the epigram is a re-inscription, due to the initiative of the archiereus Helladius, of a post-Persian text, which time had damaged. The inscription attests to the fundamental importance of the memory of the Persian Wars both in the immediate aftermath of the war and several centuries later, when a historical document dating to nearly a millennium before was still perceived as crucial to the civic identity of Megara.

HyperHamlet is a database of allusions to and quotations from Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation as a joint venture between the Departments of English and German Philology, and the Image and Media Lab at the University of Basel. The compilation of a corpus, whose aim it is to document the "Shakespeare phenomenon", is intricate on more than one level: the desired transdisciplinary approach between linguistics, literary and cultural studies entails data selection from a vast variety of sources; the pragmatic nature of intertextual traces, i.e. their dependence on and subordination to new contexts, further adds to formal heterogeneity. This is not only a challenge for annotation, but also for data selection. As the recognition of intertextual traces is more often than not based on intuition, this paper analyses the criteria which underlie intuition so that it can be operationalised for scholarly corpus compilation. An analogue to the pragmatic model of ostensive-inferential communication with its three constitutive parts of speaker's meaning, sentence meaning and hearer's meaning has been used for analytical heuristics. Authorial intent – in a concrete as well as in an abstract historical sense – origin and specific encyclopaedic knowledge have been found to be the basic assumptions underlying data selection, while quantitative factors provide supporting evidence.

At one point in Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the archdeacon, Claude Frollo, looked up from a book on his table to the edifice of the gothic cathedral, visible from his canon’s cell in the cloister of Notre Dame: “Alas!” he said, “this will kill that” (146). Frollo’s lament, that the book would destroy the edifice, captures the medieval cleric’s anxiety about the way in which Gutenberg’s print technology would become the new universal means for recording and communicating humanity’s ideas and artistic expression, replacing the grand monuments of architecture, human engineering, and craftsmanship. For Hugo, architecture was “the great handwriting of humankind” (149). The cathedral as the material outcome of human technology was being replaced by the first great machine—the printing press. At this point in the third millennium, some people undoubtedly have similar anxieties to Frollo: is it now the book’s turn to be destroyed by yet another great machine? The inclusion of “post print” in our title is not intended to sound the death knell of the book. Rather, we contend that despite the enduring value of print, digital publishing is “present and active” and is changing the way in which research, particularly in the humanities, is being undertaken. Our approach has three related parts. First, we consider how digital technologies are changing the way in which content is constructed, customised, modified, disseminated, and accessed within a global, distributed network. This section argues that the transition from print to electronic or digital publishing means both losses and gains, particularly with respect to shifts in our approaches to textuality, information, and innovative publishing. Second, we discuss the Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR) project, with which we are involved. This case study of a digitising initiative opens out the transformative possibilities and challenges of digital publishing and e-scholarship for research communities. Third, we reflect on technology’s capacity to bring about major changes in the light of the theoretical and practical issues that have arisen from our discussion. I. Digitising in a “post-print age” We are living in an era that is commonly referred to as “the late age of print” (see Kho) or the “post-print age” (see Gunkel). According to Aarseth, we have reached a point whereby nearly all of our public and personal media have become more or less digital (37). As Kho notes, web newspapers are not only becoming increasingly more popular, but they are also making rather than losing money, and paper-based newspapers are finding it difficult to recruit new readers from the younger generations (37). Not only can such online-only publications update format, content, and structure more economically than print-based publications, but their wide distribution network, speed, and flexibility attract advertising revenue. Hype and hyperbole aside, publishers are not so much discarding their legacy of print, but recognising the folly of not embracing innovative technologies that can add value by presenting information in ways that satisfy users’ needs for content to-go or for edutainment. As Kho notes: “no longer able to satisfy customer demand by producing print-only products, or even by enabling online access to semi-static content, established publishers are embracing new models for publishing, web-style” (42). Advocates of online publishing contend that the major benefits of online publishing over print technology are that it is faster, more economical, and more interactive. However, as Hovav and Gray caution, “e-publishing also involves risks, hidden costs, and trade-offs” (79). The specific focus for these authors is e-journal publishing and they contend that while cost reduction is in editing, production and distribution, if the journal is not open access, then costs relating to storage and bandwith will be transferred to the user. If we put economics aside for the moment, the transition from print to electronic text (e-text), especially with electronic literary works, brings additional considerations, particularly in their ability to make available different reading strategies to print, such as “animation, rollovers, screen design, navigation strategies, and so on” (Hayles 38). Transition from print to e-text In his book, Writing Space, David Bolter follows Victor Hugo’s lead, but does not ask if print technology will be destroyed. Rather, he argues that “the idea and ideal of the book will change: print will no longer define the organization and presentation of knowledge, as it has for the past five centuries” (2). As Hayles noted above, one significant indicator of this change, which is a consequence of the shift from analogue to digital, is the addition of graphical, audio, visual, sonic, and kinetic elements to the written word. A significant consequence of this transition is the reinvention of the book in a networked environment. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is not bound by space and time. Rather, it is an evolving entity within an ecology of readers, authors, and texts. The Web 2.0 platform has enabled more experimentation with blending of digital technology and traditional writing, particularly in the use of blogs, which have spawned blogwriting and the wikinovel. Siva Vaidhyanathan’s The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community … and Why We Should Worry is a wikinovel or blog book that was produced over a series of weeks with contributions from other bloggers (see: http://www.sivacracy.net/). Penguin Books, in collaboration with a media company, “Six Stories to Start,” have developed six stories—“We Tell Stories,” which involve different forms of interactivity from users through blog entries, Twitter text messages, an interactive google map, and other features. For example, the story titled “Fairy Tales” allows users to customise the story using their own choice of names for characters and descriptions of character traits. Each story is loosely based on a classic story and links take users to synopses of these original stories and their authors and to online purchase of the texts through the Penguin Books sales website. These examples of digital stories are a small part of the digital environment, which exploits computer and online technologies’ capacity to be interactive and immersive. As Janet Murray notes, the interactive qualities of digital environments are characterised by their procedural and participatory abilities, while their immersive qualities are characterised by their spatial and encyclopedic dimensions (71–89). These immersive and interactive qualities highlight different ways of reading texts, which entail different embodied and cognitive functions from those that reading print texts requires. As Hayles argues: the advent of electronic textuality presents us with an unparalleled opportunity to reformulate fundamental ideas about texts and, in the process, to see print as well as electronic texts with fresh eyes (89–90). The transition to e-text also highlights how digitality is changing all aspects of everyday life both inside and outside the academy. Online teaching and e-research Another aspect of the commercial arm of publishing that is impacting on academe and other organisations is the digitising and indexing of print content for niche distribution. Kho offers the example of the Mark Logic Corporation, which uses its XML content platform to repurpose content, create new content, and distribute this content through multiple portals. As the promotional website video for Mark Logic explains, academics can use this service to customise their own textbooks for students by including only articles and book chapters that are relevant to their subject. These are then organised, bound, and distributed by Mark Logic for sale to students at a cost that is generally cheaper than most textbooks. A further example of how print and digital materials can form an integrated, customised source for teachers and students is eFictions (Trimmer, Jennings, & Patterson). eFictions was one of the first print and online short story anthologies that teachers of literature could customise to their own needs. Produced as both a print text collection and a website, eFictions offers popular short stories in English by well-known traditional and contemporary writers from the US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Europe, with summaries, notes on literary features, author biographies, and, in one instance, a YouTube movie of the story. In using the eFictions website, teachers can build a customised anthology of traditional and innovative stories to suit their teaching preferences. These examples provide useful indicators of how content is constructed, customised, modified, disseminated, and accessed within a distributed network. However, the question remains as to how to measure their impact and outcomes within teaching and learning communities. As Harley suggests in her study on the use and users of digital resources in the humanities and social sciences, several factors warrant attention, such as personal teaching style, philosophy, and specific disciplinary requirements. However, in terms of understanding the benefits of digital resources for teaching and learning, Harley notes that few providers in her sample had developed any plans to evaluate use and users in a systematic way. In addition to the problems raised in Harley’s study, another relates to how researchers can be supported to take full advantage of digital technologies for e-research. The transformation brought about by information and communication technologies extends and broadens the impact of research, by making its outputs more discoverable and usable by other researchers, and its benefits more available to industry, governments, and the wider community. Traditional repositories of knowledge and information, such as libraries, are juggling the space demands of books and computer hardware alongside increasing reader demand for anywhere, anytime, anyplace access to information. Researchers’ expectations about online access to journals, eprints, bibliographic data, and the views of others through wikis, blogs, and associated social and information networking sites such as YouTube compete with the traditional expectations of the institutions that fund libraries for paper-based archives and book repositories. While university libraries are finding it increasingly difficult to purchase all hardcover books relevant to numerous and varied disciplines, a significant proportion of their budgets goes towards digital repositories (e.g., STORS), indexes, and other resources, such as full-text electronic specialised and multidisciplinary journal databases (e.g., Project Muse and Proquest); electronic serials; e-books; and specialised information sources through fast (online) document delivery services. An area that is becoming increasingly significant for those working in the humanities is the digitising of historical and cultural texts. II. Bringing back the dead: The CLDR project The CLDR project is led by researchers and librarians at the Queensland University of Technology, in collaboration with Deakin University, University of Sydney, and members of the AustLit team at The University of Queensland. The CLDR project is a “Research Community” of the electronic bibliographic database AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, which is working towards the goal of providing a complete bibliographic record of the nation’s literature. AustLit offers users with a single entry point to enhanced scholarly resources on Australian writers, their works, and other aspects of Australian literary culture and activities. AustLit and its Research Communities are supported by grants from the Australian Research Council and financial and in-kind contributions from a consortium of Australian universities, and by other external funding sources such as the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Like other more extensive digitisation projects, such as Project Gutenberg and the Rosetta Project, the CLDR project aims to provide a centralised access point for digital surrogates of early published works of Australian children’s literature, with access pathways to existing resources. The first stage of the CLDR project is to provide access to digitised, full-text, out-of-copyright Australian children’s literature from European settlement to 1945, with selected digitised critical works relevant to the field. Texts comprise a range of genres, including poetry, drama, and narrative for young readers and picture books, songs, and rhymes for infants. Currently, a selection of 75 e-texts and digital scans of original texts from Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive have been linked to the Children’s Literature Research Community. By the end of 2009, the CLDR will have digitised approximately 1000 literary texts and a significant number of critical works. Stage II and subsequent development will involve digitisation of selected texts from 1945 onwards. A precursor to the CLDR project has been undertaken by Deakin University in collaboration with the State Library of Victoria, whereby a digital bibliographic index comprising Victorian School Readers has been completed with plans for full-text digital surrogates of a selection of these texts. These texts provide valuable insights into citizenship, identity, and values formation from the 1930s onwards. At the time of writing, the CLDR is at an early stage of development. An extensive survey of out-of-copyright texts has been completed and the digitisation of these resources is about to commence. The project plans to make rich content searchable, allowing scholars from children’s literature studies and education to benefit from the many advantages of online scholarship. What digital publishing and associated digital archives, electronic texts, hypermedia, and so forth foreground is the fact that writers, readers, publishers, programmers, designers, critics, booksellers, teachers, and copyright laws operate within a context that is highly mediated by technology. In his article on large-scale digitisation projects carried out by Cornell and University of Michigan with the Making of America collection of 19th-century American serials and monographs, Hirtle notes that when special collections’ materials are available via the Web, with appropriate metadata and software, then they can “increase use of the material, contribute to new forms of research, and attract new users to the material” (44). Furthermore, Hirtle contends that despite the poor ergonomics associated with most electronic displays and e-book readers, “people will, when given the opportunity, consult an electronic text over the print original” (46). If this preference is universally accurate, especially for researchers and students, then it follows that not only will the preference for electronic surrogates of original material increase, but preference for other kinds of electronic texts will also increase. It is with this preference for electronic resources in mind that we approached the field of children’s literature in Australia and asked questions about how future generations of researchers would prefer to work. If electronic texts become the reference of choice for primary as well as secondary sources, then it seems sensible to assume that researchers would prefer to sit at the end of the keyboard than to travel considerable distances at considerable cost to access paper-based print texts in distant libraries and archives. We considered the best means for providing access to digitised primary and secondary, full text material, and digital pathways to existing online resources, particularly an extensive indexing and bibliographic database. Prior to the commencement of the CLDR project, AustLit had already indexed an extensive number of children’s literature. Challenges and dilemmas The CLDR project, even in its early stages of development, has encountered a number of challenges and dilemmas that centre on access, copyright, economic capital, and practical aspects of digitisation, and sustainability. These issues have relevance for digital publishing and e-research. A decision is yet to be made as to whether the digital texts in CLDR will be available on open or closed/tolled access. The preference is for open access. As Hayles argues, copyright is more than a legal basis for intellectual property, as it also entails ideas about authorship, creativity, and the work as an “immaterial mental construct” that goes “beyond the paper, binding, or ink” (144). Seeking copyright permission is therefore only part of the issue. Determining how the item will be accessed is a further matter, particularly as future technologies may impact upon how a digital item is used. In the case of e-journals, the issue of copyright payment structures are evolving towards a collective licensing system, pay-per-view, and other combinations of print and electronic subscription (see Hovav and Gray). For research purposes, digitisation of items for CLDR is not simply a scan and deliver process. Rather it is one that needs to ensure that the best quality is provided and that the item is both accessible and usable by researchers, and sustainable for future researchers. Sustainability is an important consideration and provides a challenge for institutions that host projects such as CLDR. Therefore, items need to be scanned to a high quality and this requires an expensive scanner and personnel costs. Files need to be in a variety of formats for preservation purposes and so that they may be manipulated to be useable in different technologies (for example, Archival Tiff, Tiff, Jpeg, PDF, HTML). Hovav and Gray warn that when technology becomes obsolete, then content becomes unreadable unless backward integration is maintained. The CLDR items will be annotatable given AustLit’s NeAt funded project: Aus-e-Lit. The Aus-e-Lit project will extend and enhance the existing AustLit web portal with data integration and search services, empirical reporting services, collaborative annotation services, and compound object authoring, editing, and publishing services. For users to be able to get the most out of a digital item, it needs to be searchable, either through double keying or OCR (optimal character recognition). The value of CLDR’s contribution The value of the CLDR project lies in its goal to provide a comprehensive, searchable body of texts (fictional and critical) to researchers across the humanities and social sciences. Other projects seem to be intent on putting up as many items as possible to be considered as a first resort for online texts. CLDR is more specific and is not interested in simply generating a presence on the Web. Rather, it is research driven both in its design and implementation, and in its focussed outcomes of assisting academics and students primarily in their e-research endeavours. To this end, we have concentrated on the following: an extensive survey of appropriate texts; best models for file location, distribution, and use; and high standards of digitising protocols. These issues that relate to data storage, digitisation, collections, management, and end-users of data are aligned with the “Development of an Australian Research Data Strategy” outlined in An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework (2006). CLDR is not designed to simply replicate resources, as it has a distinct focus, audience, and research potential. In addition, it looks at resources that may be forgotten or are no longer available in reproduction by current publishing companies. Thus, the aim of CLDR is to preserve both the time and a period of Australian history and literary culture. It will also provide users with an accessible repository of rare and early texts written for children. III. Future directions It is now commonplace to recognize that the Web’s role as information provider has changed over the past decade. New forms of “collective intelligence” or “distributed cognition” (Oblinger and Lombardi) are emerging within and outside formal research communities. Technology’s capacity to initiate major cultural, social, educational, economic, political and commercial shifts has conditioned us to expect the “next big thing.” We have learnt to adapt swiftly to the many challenges that online technologies have presented, and we have reaped the benefits. As the examples in this discussion have highlighted, the changes in online publishing and digitisation have provided many material, network, pedagogical, and research possibilities: we teach online units providing students with access to e-journals, e-books, and customized archives of digitised materials; we communicate via various online technologies; we attend virtual conferences; and we participate in e-research through a global, digital network. In other words, technology is deeply engrained in our everyday lives. In returning to Frollo’s concern that the book would destroy architecture, Umberto Eco offers a placatory note: “in the history of culture it has never happened that something has simply killed something else. Something has profoundly changed something else” (n. pag.). Eco’s point has relevance to our discussion of digital publishing. The transition from print to digital necessitates a profound change that impacts on the ways we read, write, and research. As we have illustrated with our case study of the CLDR project, the move to creating digitised texts of print literature needs to be considered within a dynamic network of multiple causalities, emergent technological processes, and complex negotiations through which digital texts are created, stored, disseminated, and used. Technological changes in just the past five years have, in many ways, created an expectation in the minds of people that the future is no longer some distant time from the present. Rather, as our title suggests, the future is both present and active. References Aarseth, Espen. “How we became Postdigital: From Cyberstudies to Game Studies.” Critical Cyber-culture Studies. Ed. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari. New York: New York UP, 2006. 37–46. An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework: Final Report of the e-Research Coordinating Committee. Commonwealth of Australia, 2006. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991. Eco, Umberto. “The Future of the Book.” 1994. 3 June 2008 ‹http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_future_of_book.html>. Gunkel, David. J. “What's the Matter with Books?” Configurations 11.3 (2003): 277–303. Harley, Diane. “Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences.” Research and Occasional Papers Series. Berkeley: University of California. Centre for Studies in Higher Education. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_future_of_book.html>. Hayles, N. Katherine. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Hirtle, Peter B. “The Impact of Digitization on Special Collections in Libraries.” Libraries & Culture 37.1 (2002): 42–52. Hovav, Anat and Paul Gray. “Managing Academic E-journals.” Communications of the ACM 47.4 (2004): 79–82. Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth editions, 1993. Kho, Nancy D. “The Medium Gets the Message: Post-Print Publishing Models.” EContent 30.6 (2007): 42–48. Oblinger, Diana and Marilyn Lombardi. “Common Knowledge: Openness in Higher Education.” Opening up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education Through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge. Ed. Toru Liyoshi and M. S. Vijay Kumar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 389–400. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Trimmer, Joseph F., Wade Jennings, and Annette Patterson. eFictions. New York: Harcourt, 2001.

This work deals with the creation of a system that allows uploading and annotating scans of historical documents and subsequent active learning of models for character recognition (OCR) on available annotations (marked lines and their transcripts). The work describes the process, classifies the techniques and presents an existing system for character recognition. Above all, emphasis is placed on machine learning methods. Furthermore, the methods of active learning are explained and a method of active learning of available OCR models from annotated scans is proposed. The rest of the work deals with a system design, implementation, available datasets, evaluation of self-created OCR model and testing of the entire system.

Ever since the summer of 1829, when newspapers began announcing the forthcoming publication of the Book of Mormon, that text has been the object of both praise and ridicule, a situation that shows no signs of easing almost two hundred years later. Scholars agree, however, that understanding the primary documents surrounding the origin of the Book of Mormon is essential to understanding its significance in American history. This volume presents a representative selection of those source documents, emphasizing first-person accounts produced close to the time of the events in question. Embracing such values as balance, fairness, openness, integrity, and the willingness to be self-critical, the introductions and annotation accompanying each document set the events in their historical context.

Since the 2000s, terrestrial laser scanning, as one of the methods used to document historical edifices in protected areas, has taken on greater importance because it mitigates the difficulties associated with working on large areas and saves time while also making it possible to better understand all the particularities of the area. Through this technology, comprehensive point data (point clouds) about the surface of an object can be generated in a highly accurate three-dimensional manner. Furthermore, with the proper software this three-dimensional point cloud data can be transformed into three-dimensional rendering/mapping/modeling and quantitative orthophotographs. In this chapter, the study will present the results of terrestrial laser scanning and surveying which was used to obtain three-dimensional point clouds through three-dimensional survey measurements and scans of silhouettes of streets in Fatih in Historic Peninsula in Istanbul, which were then transposed into survey images and drawings. The study will also cite examples of the facade mapping using terrestrial laser scanning data in Istanbul Historic Peninsula Project.

The paper deals with the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) to the documentation and preservation of Archaeological Heritage. illustrating the implemantation process to a case study. The work process started from the historical analysis tighether with the geometric capturing of the built morphology. A 3D model was created by combining laser scans and a digital photogrammetric survey. To maka all 3D data sets interoperable, it was developed a BIM project execution plan focused on the restoration of Shipwreck Museum in the Kyrenia Castle in Cyprus. The HBIM approach not only allows ti represent the existing historic fabric with an effective visualization but also to lead a complex analysis of designed interventions in various scenarios. All the additional information besides the geometrical data were stored into the HBIM able ti document the manteinance and ti help the future works. It will be illustrated the procedure and the methodology by presenting the outcomes of the research.