ITR/IM: Digitizing the Burney Collection of Early English Newspapers

位于滨江的加州大学的书目研究中心正在对大英图书馆的伯尼18世纪英文报纸集进行数字化。 由于原件易碎，目前只能通过阅读室的一个缩微胶卷副本查阅。即使是数字化版本的使用也可能是繁琐和费时的，因为收集的文件数量庞大，达650 000页，而且查阅受到日期和标题的限制。 由于手机类型、不均匀的线条、破碎的字母、污迹或变化的墨水强度以及变黄的纸张的变幻莫测，因此不可能通过可用的光学字符阅读软件产生准确的、可搜索的文本。 新技术的出现现在使该中心能够制作高度准确的可搜索文本。 一个完全可搜索的文本链接到数字图像将允许非凡的访问和解锁研究人员的数据集合包含的令人难以置信的丰富范围。 这一结果将为手工印刷时代的期刊和专著的检索提供一种新的模式。 它将开辟全新的研究策略和课题。 它将把基于计算机的文本搜索的奇迹扩展到构成现代世界基础的文本语料库。

The Center for Bibliographical Studies at the University of California, Riverside, is in the process of digitizing the Burney Collection of eighteenth-century English newspapers at the British Library. Access is currently possible only through a single microfilm copy in the reading room, because of the fragility of the originals. Use of even a digitized version could remain cumbersome and time-consuming because of the large size of the collection, 650,000 pages, and access limited by date and title. Heretofore the vagaries of handset type, uneven lines, broken letters, smudged or changing ink intensities and yellowing paper, it has not been possible produce an accurate, searchable text through available optical character reading software. The emergence of new technologies now enables the Center to produce a searchable text with a high degree of accuracy. A fully searchable text linked to digital images will permit extraordinary access and unlock for researchers the incredibly rich range of data the Collection contains. The result will provide a new model for accessing both periodicals and monographs of the hand-press era. It will open up whole new research strategies and topics. And it will extend the wonders of computer-based text searching to the corpus of texts that form the foundation of the modern world.