Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records: New Transkribus and Natural Language Processing Approaches

比较和结合早期现代爱尔兰和苏格兰土地记录旨在将负责爱尔兰契约登记处和苏格兰Sasines登记处的存储库与学者，数字人文专家和用户组一起探索如何使这些记录更易于访问和理解。苏格兰国家记录局（NRS）和爱尔兰财产登记局（PRAI）是分别负责萨辛和爱尔兰契约的档案机构。这些是欧洲最全面的关于土地所有权、转让和财政利用的早期现代记录。它们为促进爱尔兰和英国两个国际重要档案之间的新跨学科合作提供了理想的基础，在各自国家的高等教育部门，以及与公民和公共利益相关者的接触。苏格兰记录涵盖1617年至今，爱尔兰契约涵盖1708年至今。它们提供了一个独特的机会，可以在很长一段时间内直接比较两个不同的早期现代北欧社会。土地是两个社会的主要政治、经济、社会和文化基础。记录反映了这种中心地位。它们提供了以下方面的详细见解：土地所有权模式；宗教和政治少数群体的边缘化；爱尔兰和苏格兰的国际和全球贸易；妇女的待遇；土地经济的运作；以及地方命名、语言和土地使用的长期趋势。这些记录对学术和地方历史学家、法律学者、地理学家、地名和家族史专家、历史语言学家和古文字学家具有多方面的相关性。它们也是一种重要的社会和公民资源，对文化和遗产提供者具有明显的国家和国际意义。虽然Deeds和Sasines是具有国际意义的历史和文化遗产资源，但它们目前的形式在很大程度上是不可接近的。国家统计局已经将其记录数字化，并提供在线访问，效果非常好。但查阅纪录的法律功能仍然限制查阅能力，因为这些纪录必须预先知道有关物业及买卖双方的情况。与此同时，PRAI于2019年6月成立了一个数字化战略咨询小组，并打算继续对整个卷系列的转录纪念馆进行数字化。随着早期的爱尔兰契约很快以数字形式提供，该项目将利用一系列研讨会在感兴趣的利益相关者之间建立伙伴关系。它旨在汇集、相互联系和结合来自爱尔兰和苏格兰的专业知识、知识和资源。通过这种方式，它将提供实质性的和增强的利益，这正是英国-爱尔兰数字人文学科合作所设想的方式。这四场研讨会将于2020年5月至2021年4月在都柏林、爱丁堡和格拉斯哥举行。他们将：开发和测试一个分两阶段的过程：首先，确认Transkribus的文本识别技术（HTR）的能力，从包含五种语言的两种不同配置的多作者记录中提供一致的、高精度（90%-92%匹配）的转录：英语；盖尔语;Gaeilge;拉丁语;苏格兰人的;其次，与TCD的ADAPT研究中心团队合作，网络参与者将致力于构思、开发和测试自然语言处理（NLP）识别文本元素、实体识别和提取技术的能力，以促进用户群体识别的人物、地点和其他相关实体的标记。到网络结束时，参与者将确定未来多机构、跨学科资助申请的时间表，该申请将通过以实体提取为中心的小规模电子数据交换（EDI）开始建立数字桥梁。

Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records aims to bring the repositories responsible for the Irish Registry of Deeds and Scottish Register of Sasines together with academics, Digital Humanities specialists and user groups to explore how these records can be made more accessible and understandable. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) and Property Registration Authority of Ireland (PRAI) are the archival institutions responsible for the Sasines and the Irish Deeds respectively. These are among Europe's most comprehensive early modern records relating to the ownership, transfer and financial utilization of land. They offer the ideal basis around which to foster new interdisciplinary collaboration between two internationally significant archives in Ireland and the UK, the HE sector in the respective countries, and engagement with civic and public stakeholders. The Scottish records cover 1617 to the present and the Irish Deeds 1708 to the present. They offer a unique opportunity for direct comparability over a long duration between two different early modern Northern European societies. Land was the primary political, economic, social and cultural foundation of both societies. The records reflect this centrality. They provide detailed insights into: patterns of land ownership; the marginalisation of religious and political minorities; Ireland and Scotland's international and global commerce; the treatment of women; the functioning of the landed economy; as well as long term trends in place naming, language and land use. The records are of multifaceted relevance to academic and local historians, legal scholars, geographers, place name and family history specialists, historical linguists and paleographers. They are also a major social and civic resource of obvious national and international significance for cultural and heritage providers. Although the Deeds and Sasines are internationally significant historical and cultural heritage resources, they are largely inaccessible in their current form. The NRS has digitized its records and provides online access to excellent effect. But search capacities remain limited by the legal function of the records which presuppose knowledge of the property and buyer/seller. Meanwhile, PRAI has established a digitisation strategy advisory group in June 2019 and intends proceeding with digitization of the entire volume series of transcribed memorials. With the early years of the Irish Deeds soon to become available in digital form, the project will use a series of workshops to build partnership working between interested stakeholders. It aims to pool, inter-relate and combine expertise, knowledge and resources from Ireland and Scotland. In this way it will provide substantial and enhanced benefits in precisely the way envisaged by the UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities call. The four workshops will be held between May 2020 and April 2021 in Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow. They will: Develop and test a two stage process that:Firstly, confirms the capacity of Transkribus's text recognition technology (HTR) to deliver consistent, high accuracy (90%-92% match) transcriptions from two differently configured, multiple authored records containing five languages: English; Gaelic; Gaeilge; Latin; and Scots;Secondly, working collaboratively with TCD's ADAPT Research Center team, the network participants will aim to conceive, develop and test the ability of Natural Language Processing [NLP] to identify textual elements, entity identification and extraction techniques to facilitate the mark up of people, places and other relevance entities identified by user groups. By the end of the network participants will have identified an timescale for a future multi-institutional, trans-disciplinary grant application which will begin digital bridge building through small-scale electronic data exchange (EDI) centred around entity extraction.