Computer Vision in Book History

Organized by: CERL, Visual Geometry Group - University of Oxford, Brill Publishers, KBLab at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Sponsored by: Visual Geometry Group - University of Oxford, KB - nationale bibliotheek, CERL, Brill

Speaker(s): Cornelis van Lit,Cristina Dondi,Etienne Posthumus,Giles Bergel,Heleen Wilbrink,Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen,Lise Stork,Marieke van Delft,Matilde Malaspina,Thomas Smits

Computer vision is making rapid progress in its ability to extract information from documents. Libraries, academic digital humanists and publishers are now moving from experimenting with computer vision to considering how to implement it in their search platforms or research methods, or support it for their users. This one-day symposium will combine presentations on current research using computer vision with hands-on training in computer vision tools. It will both showcase the state-of-the-art in the field and discuss how it can be made more accessible to users of libraries and digital repositories.

Organising committee

Giles Bergel of the Visual Geometry Group, University of Oxford,
Etienne Postumus of Brill Publishers, Leiden Amsterdam,
Lotte Wilms of the KBLab at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands,
Marieke van Delft, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands and
Marian Lefferts of CERL, The Hague

Image courtesy Dr. Guyda Armstrong, John Rylands Research Institute ‘Envisioning Dante’ project

Programme

– 9.30: Registration
– 10:00: Welcome
– 10.10: Introduction: Giles Bergel (Visual Geometry Group, Oxford)
– 10.30-13.00: Hands on workshop on tools developed by the VGG Oxford : Giles Bergel and Etienne Posthumus (Brill)
– 13.00-14.00: Lunch
– 14.00-15.00: Lightning talks – preliminary list, details will be added as they become available

Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, Utrecht University: Tracing the printing history of the botanical woodblocks at the Museum Plantin-Moretus using VGG Image Search Engine (VISE)
Lise Stork (Leiden University): Semi-automated semantic annotation of natural history archival collections.
Cristina Dondi and Matilde Malaspina (15cBOOKTRADE, Oxford): Tracking the movement of 15th-century books and illustration with 15cVISUALISATION and 15cILLUSTRATION
Marieke van Delft, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands and Etienne Postumus of Brill Publishers, Leiden Amsterdam, on the CERL Provenance Digital Archive
Thomas Smits, Radboud University, Nijmegen: Advertising Gender. Using Computer Vision to trace Gender Displays in Historical Advertisements (see also)
Heleen Wilbrink, Egyptologist and owner of social enterprise Aincient, on Computer Vision to support cross searching collections with materials from Ancient Egypt (see also)

– 15.00-16.00: Keynote: Dr Cornelis van Lit (Utrecht University), ‘Getting Ready for the CV Revolution.’ (Eric van Lit is also known as the the Digital Orientalist). A video registration of the key note is available here.
– 16.00-16.30: Break
– 16.30-17.00: Discussion