Namescape Search

Searching and visualizing Named Entities in modern Dutch novels. The named entity (NE) tagging and resolution in NameScape enables quantitative and repeatable research where previously only guesswork and anecdotal evidence was feasible. The visualisation module enables researchers with a less technical background to draw conclusions about functions of names in literary work and help them to explore the material in search of more interesting questions (and answers). Users from other communities (sociolinguistics, sentiment analysis, …) also benefit from the NE tagged data, especially since the NE recognizer is available as a web service, enabling researchers to annotate their own research data. Datasets in NameScape (total of 1.129 books): Corpus Sanders: A corpus of 582 Dutch novels written and published between 1970 and 2009 will. Corpus Huygens: Consists of 22 novels manually tagged with detailed named entity information. IPR for this corpus do not allow distribution. Corpus eBooks: Consists of 7000+ Dutch eBooks tagged automatically with basic NER features and person name Part information. IPR for this corpus do not allow distribution. Corpus SoNaR Books: 105 Dutch books; NE tagged. Corpus Gutenberg Dutch: Consists of 530 NE tagged TEI files converted from the Epub versions of the corresponding Gutenberg documents. Recent research has conclusively proven names in literary works can only be put fully into perspective when studied in a wider context (landscape) of names either in the same text or in related material (the onymic landscape or “namescape”). Research on large corpora is needed to gain a better understanding of e.g. what is characteristic for a certain period, genre, author or cultural region. The data necessary for research on this scale simply does not exist yet. NameScape aims to fill the need by providing a substantial amount of literary works annotated with a rich tag set, thereby enabling researchers to perform their research in more depth than previously possible. Several exploratory visualization tools help the scholar to answer old questions and uncover many more new ones, which can be addressed using the demonstrator.

de Does, J, Depuydt, K, van Dalen-Oskam, K and Marx, M. 2017. Namescape: Named Entity Recognition from a Literary Perspective. In: Odijk, J and van Hessen, A. (eds.) CLARIN in the Low Countries, Pp. 361–370. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbi.30. License: CC-BY 4.0

Karina van Dalen-Oskam (2013), Nordic Noir: a background check on Inspector Van Veeteren, 31 May 2012, http://blog.namescape.nl/?p=47