The head of the "Institute of History and Philology's Project to Digitally Innovate Academic Settings" sub-project "Developing Big Data Analysis Technology for Research Databases," Tsai Tzong-han, will travel to the Netherlands to present a paper at the premier international Digital Humanities Conference 2019, from July 9 to 12.
The paper's topic is "Event Extraction on Classical Chinese Historical Texts: A Case Study of Extracting Tributary Events from the Ming Shilu". Tsai Tzong-han and his team used "Semantic Role Labeling" (SRL) technology to conduct automated identification and extraction of events from the Ming Shilu annals. This was an attempt to apply machine learning techniques to historical event extraction.
The Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures' "Digital Archives and Digital Humanities Research Project" has yearly open calls for proposals, which can be categorized into three project types:
1.Expanding the digital archive catalog, building digital humanities research databases
2.Digital humanities research
3.Digital content collection and digital technology development
The "Institute of History and Philology's Project to Digitally Innovate Academic Settings" is of the first type. The goal of its sub-project, "Developing Big Data Analysis Technology for Research Databases," this year is to develop an extraction method with natural language for use on the vast Scripta Sinica Chinese classics text database, automating extraction of important keywords and analyzing all information relevant to the extracted persons and places. In addition, using the Ming Shilu as the data sample, the project will incorporate recently developed unsupervised learning technology to analyze textual events and conduct extraction of persons, places, times, and events, gradually integrating the relevant contents to build a database.
Event Extraction on Classical Chinese Historical Texts: A Case Study of Extracting Tributary Events from the Ming Shilu concerns the implementation of this project. The theme of the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 is "Complexities"; Tsai Tzong-han will present the paper during the “History and Historiographies” session on July 12.
The Digital Humanities Conference was founded in 1989 as the premier annual conference for the field of international digital humanities. Each year, it attracts over one thousand academic specialist attendees from across the globe.
Digital Humanities Conference 2019
Date: 9th to 12th July, 2019
Location: TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands
Organized by: Utrecht University
Related links:
The Institute of History and Philology's Project to Digitally Innovate Academic Settings Overview
The Institute of History and Philology's Project to Digitally Innovate Academic Settings Website