M. H. BealsSheffield Hallam University

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Proliferation of Colonial and Provincial Presses

• Spread of Journeyman Printers

• Reduction of Stamp Duty

New Profit Models

• Entertaining Content and Advertisements to Attract Readers to Sell to Advertisers

Manual Dissemination of News

• Postal Exchange, Subscriptions, Correspondence

• No Telegraph until 1840s; Not Used for Miscellany

NETWORK NEWS, GEORGIAN STYLE

Rising Interest in Media History and the History of the

Provincial Press

Large-Scale Digitisation Project

Growing Number of Early Careerists

Advent of Crowdsourcing

WHY NOW?

Identifying

•Datelines (Source)•Sections (Topic / Source)•Attributions (Source)•In-Text References (Topic / Source)

Creating Meta-Data Networks•Institutional Sources•Individual Sources•Geographic Sources

TEXTUAL CLUES

INTER-TEXTUAL CLUES

Printed (No MRT) Digital (MRT)

Cataloging / Limited Networks

Creation of Metadata Regarding Article

Characteristics and Network Clues

Hunt for Specific Articles Based on Search Criteria to

Create Case-Study Networks

Transcriptions / Scissors-and-Paste

Networks

Create Detailed Transcriptions with

Relevant Typesetting Metadata

Correct OCR Data Manually or Through

Replacement Protocols

A MULTIMODAL APPROACH

</item> <id>001569</id> <newspaper_title>Glasgow Advertiser</newspaper_title> <newspaper_city>Glasgow</newspaper_city> <newspaper_province>Scotland</newspaper_province> <newspaper_country>United Kingdom</newspaper_country> <year>1794</year> <month>2</month> <day>7</day> <page_number>5</page_number> <section_name>London</section_name> <articletype>news</articletype> <keywords>Quakerism</keywords> <text>

<page> <column>

<paragraph> <line>The Quakers of America have addressed an</line> <line>humble Representation to the Legislative Body of</line> <line>that country, praying that exhibitions, Preludes,</line> <line>Interludes, yea, all <italics>lewds</italics> and stage-plays may be</line> <line>discountenanced, pointing out their pernicious ten-</line> <line>dency in corrupting the morals of the People.</line>

</paragraph> </column>

</page></text></item>

MACHINE READABLE TRANSCRIPTIONS

• Identifying Likely Matches• Off-the-Shelf Software (Turn-it-In / WCopyFind / Juxta)• Matching Phrases and Grammatical Structures

• Building Up Directionality Confidences• Raw Percentage of Matching Text• Chronological-Geographical Limitations• Truncation• Supplementary Text• Abbreviations• Mistakes

PROGRAMMING PLAGIARISM

SCOTTISH NEWS NETWORKS (TOPIC)

SCOTTISH NEWS NETWORKS (TEXTUAL)

SCOTTISH NEWS NETWORKS (INTER-TEXTUAL)

SCOTTISH NEWS NETWORKS (INTER-TEXTUAL)

High-Level Languages•Easy to Acquire Syntax•Variety of Free Editors and a Large Open-Source Community•(Relatively) Slow•Support from other Historians (http://programminghistorian.org/)

Low-Level Languages•(Relatively) Unnatural Syntax•Faster Processing•Free and Commercial Editors and Compilers

THE PROGRAMMING HISTORIAN©

M. H. BealsSheffield Hallam University

READ THIS PAPER

ABOUT ME