A Tale of Two Transcriptions : Machine-Assisted Transcription of Historical Sources

This article is part of the "Norwegian Historical Population Register" project financed by the Norwegian Research Council (grant # 225950) and the Advanced Grand Project "Five Centuries of Marriages"(2011-2016) funded by the European Research Council (# ERC 2010-AdG_20100407)This article explains how two projects implement semi-automated transcription routines: for census sheets in Norway and marriage protocols from Barcelona. The Spanish system was created to transcribe the marriage license books from 1451 to 1905 for the Barcelona area; one of the world's longest series of preserved vital records. Thus, in the Project "Five Centuries of Marriages" (5CofM) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona's Center for Demographic Studies, the Barcelona Historical Marriage Database has been built. More than 600,000 records were transcribed by 150 transcribers working online. The Norwegian material is cross-sectional as it is the 1891 census, recorded on one sheet per person. This format and the underlining of keywords for several variables made it more feasible to semi-automate data entry than when many persons are listed on the same page. While Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for printed text is scientifically mature, computer vision research is now focused on more difficult problems such as handwriting recognition. In the marriage project, document analysis methods have been proposed to automatically recognize the marriage licenses. Fully automatic recognition is still a challenge, but some promising results have been obtained. In Spain, Norway and elsewhere the source material is available as scanned pictures on the Internet, opening up the possibility for further international cooperation concerning automating the transcription of historic source materials. Like what is being done in projects to digitize printed materials, the optimal solution is likely to be a combination of manual transcription and machine-assisted recognition also for hand-written sources

Changes in choice of spouse as an indicator of a society in a state of transition: Woerden, 1830-1930

Der Prozeß der Modernisierung hat auch in sozialer Hinsicht eine offene Gesellschaft geschaffen. Ein Indikator dafür ist das Maß an äußerer Übereinstimmung zwischen Ehepartnern. Die These, daß die Modernisierung der Gesellschaft auch eine freiere und weniger pragmatische Partnerwahl begünstigt, wird überprüft. Auf der Quellengrundlage der eingetragenen Ehen, die in der niederländischen Stadt Woerden von 1830 - 1930 geschlossen wurden, werden der Wandel in der sozialen, altersmäßigen und religiösen Übereinstimmung bei der Partnerwahl untersucht. Dabei werden sechs soziale Klassen zwischen 'Ungelernte Arbeiter' und 'Oberklasse' sowie die Religionen römisch-katholisch, calvinistisch und lutheranisch unterschieden. Die sozialen, religiösen und Altersfaktoren werden in einem Beziehungszusammenhang betrachtet. Es zeigt sich, daß die Alters- und soziale Klassenübereinstimmung abnehmen, während die religiöse Übereinstimmung zunimmt. (prf)'The 19th and 20th centuries have been an era characterised by social modernisation spurred on primarily by economic developments. The process of modernisation also had an impact on interpersonal relationships and resulted in a more open society. The degree of homogamy between husbands and wives is an important indicator for societal openness, the theory being that the changes which occurred during this period enabled people to be freer and less pragmatic when choosing a spouse. This paper examines this thesis by studying changes in social class, age- and religious homogamy based on marriage data for the town of Woerden during the period 1830-1930. In contrast to other studies which examined the degree of homogamy of each of these variables in isolation, our aim was to reveal the interrelationship between the factors which influenced a person's choice of spouse, using log-linear analyses. The results show that a unidimensional model positing a trend towards increasing openness can be misleading. A decline in social class homogamy and an increase in age homogamy - indicators which would suggest that people had more freedom when it came to choosing a spouse - were found to go hand in hand with an increase in religious homogamy - indicative of a society in the ever-tightening grip of religion.' (author's abstract

Civil Society in the 'Visegrad Four': Data and Literature in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia

The first of three publications on the '25 Years After -- Mapping Civil Society in the Visegrád Four' project contains an overview of existing data and literature in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It looks at where and what kind of research on civil society has been and is being done, who is doing it and where the gaps are.To be consistent and comparable, the four country reports include the same core sections: relevant publications on civil society in the respective country; existing databases and other data sources; active centres of research, training, and policy studies. More than providing just a list, this report looks at how they can be evaluated in terms of scope, accurateness and depth. Finally, it considers the question of what the most crucial gaps in research and funding in the countries are.An academic volume is slated for the end of 2014. For other publications in English and German, see www.maecenata.eu

Trends in Papal communication: a content analysis of Encyclicals, from Leo XIII to Pope Francis

Within the papal encyclicals (exhortations) ranging from Leo XIII (1878) to Pope Francis (2013), concern for authority in general and for obedience and duty, in particular, is in decline. This longterm trend signals intra-ecclesial secularization at the elite level. A second negative trend supports this finding: textual indicators for Catholic uniqueness such as: Catholic, Doctrine and Pope have steadily lost prominence. Upwardly directed, the textual indicators for God, Jesus, Gospel, Spirituality and Love follow positive long-term trends. The traditional eschatological code, with its keywords sin, death, final judgment, heaven or hell, reaches only low levels of attention. Overall, there is an eschatological loss, where Heaven, due to a slower decline, wins over Hell. Christ the Inexorable Judge is retreating in favor of the loving Jesus and God as Love. The millennia-old process of civilizing God persists. Technically, the quantitative content analysis was carried out mainly with TEXTPACK

‘On different levels ourselves went forward’ : pageantry, class politics and narrative form in Virginia Woolf’s late writing

This essay focuses on questions of class, politics and narrative form in Virginia Woolf’s late writing, in particular her posthumously published novel, Between the Acts. The novel is frequently discussed by critics in relation to the Second World War; this essay pushes an overlapping but critically overlooked context into view. It reads the text in the light of late 1930s leftist cultural production, particularly those discourses about national history and cultural traditions that loomed large during the popular front period. The essay argues that Woolf’s last novel is the conflicted location of a search for a more inclusive narrative form

The Italian transition from an emigration to immigration country

This working paper contains the Policy oriented executive summary and the National report prepared by the IRPPS-CNR team in the framework of the European research project IDEA (Mediterranean and Eastern European countries as new immigration destinations in the European Union). The main aim of the project is the comparison of migration trends among European receiving countries to improve the understanding of the national migration experience. The report, after a short introduction devoted to the long Italian history of emigration, analyses trends and characteristics of international migration flows in the last decades as well as size and structure of the foreign population living in Italy. Migration and integration policies and the different impacts of foreign immigration are also considered

Carillons and Carillon Music in Old Gdańsk

The history of Gdańsk carillons begins in 1561. It was that year that fourteen automatic bells were installed in the Main Town Hall. Later, a "striking mechanism" appeared in St Catherine’s Church. This magnificent instrument, consisting of thirty-five bells, has been in use since 1738. The third carillon was built in 1939 in the youth hostel at Biskupia Górka. The play of Gdańsk carillons was interrupted by the Second World War. The book discusses the history and music of Gdańsk carillons. It contains valuable information on bells, carillon mechanisms, bell founders, carillonists, and bell setters, inviting the reader to study the Protestant repertoire, the unique notation of preserved manuscripts, and the remarkable soundscape of Gdańsk, which for centuries has been marked by the sound of carillons