Hi David
I've been looking at it from that angle too, thought not quite in as much
detail as it sounds like you have! And I've also been thinking about the
'middle' bit that you allude to - once you've deciphered them, how you
might store these things in a unified way.
I'm working on a prototype crowdsourcing toolkit for cultural collections
and will be presenting the concept in a quick open-mic session at next
week's UKMW13. The aim is not just to give users tools, but also tap into
natural language processing (e.g. OpenCalais, Alchemy, Zemanta) to suggest
tags, locations, dates, people, events etc that users can then verify (or
otherwise!).
Give me a shout if you'd like to have a look at this in a day or two, when
I should have something ready for testing.
Cheers, James
---
James Morley
www.jamesmorley.net / @jamesinealing
www.whatsthatpicture.com / @PhotosOfThePast
www.apennypermile.com / @APennyPerMile
<http://www.apennypermile.com>
On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:54 AM, David Croft <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> I've been working on this problem on an off for a while now, but from the
> other side as it were. Trying to extract the dates that the record author
> meant from what they actually wrote.
> There are a LOT of different date formats out there and I've yet to see a
> really good solution.
> I'm coming at this problem from a software angle, trying to decode dates
> automatically, so my desires for date formats may be different to yours.
> But I really, really, really wish that date information was stated
> explicitly and consistently.
>
> Plenty of collections use modifiers like 'circa', 'early' or 'first half',
> but then don't use these consistently.
> In one record 'late 20th century' means 1950 to 2000, in another place it
> will mean 1975 to 2000.
> These sort of date modifiers never seem to get explicitly defined for the
> collection which means that what one collection means by 'circa' is
> different to what another collection means.
> The modifiers also mean different things to different dates, 'circa 1950'
> may mean 1945 to 1955 but is `circa 1950s' 1950 to 1959 or 1945 to 1965?
> There are lots of records with dates like '80s' where you just have to
> assume the century information or '1940-50s' where you assume it means 1940
> to 1959.
>
> So for me, the best way is just to provide the upper and lower bounds for
> date period in full, i.e. not `circa 1955' but instead `1950/1/1 to
> 1959/12/31`.
> Or if that's not possible, define exactly what you mean by 'circa',
> 'late', 'early' etc and make that information available where anyone
> looking at your records can see it.
> For example, are you going to use the word 'circa'? or just put a 'c' on
> the front of the date i.e. 'c1950'?
> If there are two dates in a field does the circa apply to just the first
> one or both? i.e. is 'circa 1950 to 1960' the same as 'circa 1950 to circa
> 1960'?
> If you are saying 'circa 19th century' do you mean up to 25 years either
> side? 50 years? 75?
> Software can decode any format you use as long as we know what the rules
> are.
>
> P.S
> There are some truly interesting date fields out there and I've been
> keeping a list as part of my really tricky testing data.
> Some of my favourites are '25 feb ?', 'circa pre world war two', 'early or
> late 19th or 20 century' and 'c18-1 to c--01?'
>
> David
>
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