Entangled History! Making Ordinances Searchable.

Entangled History! Making Ordinances Searchable.

To open up early modern legal historical sources (ordinances), the Entangled History project will run from May-October 2019. Its aim is to systematically categorise the normative texts (according to MPIeR-standards). It will be the starting point to identify influencers throughout the Low Countries and maybe – in due time – even outside of that. It will, too, show what may be the true nature – identity – of a province. This presentation/ poster will describe this Digital Humanities-Project and ask participants to think along and come with suggestions for the project – and future DH-projects.

It involves the (1) improvement of the currently applied OCR-technique to a much higher recognition-standard with HTR. It (2) enhances readability by systematically segmenting individual texts, recognising text-sections – beginning or end, columns, titles, dates, summaries, the body of the text. In order to improve the searchability, I suggest the (3) application of a standard categorisation (metadata) with a machine-learned algorithm. A categorisation by a machine-learned algorithm will offer ample possibilities to computer-search for similar topics within texts and do content-based longitudinal searches, whereas the actual title may not be so helpful to modern readers.

The KB-library hosts at least 42 digitised plakkaatboeken (bundles of normative texts – ca.1540s-1800s) and near 5000 individual plakkaten (16^th-19^th century). These texts contain indications of how governments of burgeoning states dealt with unexpected threats to safety, security, and order through home-invented measures, borrowed rules, or adjustments of what was established elsewhere.