Abstract

Digital libraries of historical documents provide a wealth of information about past events, often in unstructured form. Once dates and place names are identified and disambiguated, using methods that can di#er by genre, we examine collocations to detect events. Collocations can be ranked by several measures, which vary in e#ectiveness according to type of events, but the log-likelihood measure (-2 log #) o#ers a reasonable balance between frequently and infrequently mentioned events and between larger and smaller spatial and temporal ranges. Significant date-place collocations can be displayed on timelines and maps as an interface to digital libraries. More detailed displays can highlight key names and phrases associated with a given event.

Citations