Visual search for exploring and dating collections: lessons from Spanish chapbooks

Description

The workshop will explore the challenges and opportunities that using digital tools can bring to the study of large collections of images and their associated metadata.

The team of a project funded by the CHRG will show participants VISE, the tool they have used to help them establish the chronology of undated street literature. The workshop will include the opportunity to explore hands-on how this tool works. VISE is an open-source computer vision software developed by Oxford University’s Visual Geometry Group, and the project has applied it to a collection of ephemeral material (mainly 18^th and 19^th centuries) from Cambridge University Library and the British Library that were digitised and catalogued for the project ‘Wrongdoing in Spain: 1800-1936’. Some background information about both projects can be seen at: https://europeancollections.wordpress.com/2022/01/17/dating-spanish-chapbooks-the-wonders-of-artificial-intelligence/

We hope that this method of exploring data, together with the experience and findings of this group, will open up ways for people in a variety of projects in digital humanities whether in history, cultural studies, history of the book, or in other fields where the cross-matching of data could yield new pathways and interesting results.

Registration required, please state whether you will attend online or in-person. In-person attendees will need to bring their own laptop.