Integrating archaeological literature into resource discovery interfaces using natural language processing and name authority services

Abstract

There exists a large and underutilized resource of archaeological literature, both formal, such as scholarly journals and less formal in the form of ‘grey literature’. In the archaeological domain the vast majority of this literature contains some geo-spatial element as well as the expected temporal information and therefore its ease of discovery would be greatly enhanced were it accessible via a geo-spatially enabled search mechanism. As a result of this, geo-referencing these types of material and integrating them with other resources, such as monument inventories, is seen as a desirable enhancement for digital archives serving the archaeological research community. This paper provides an overview of a number of the approaches to the integration of such legacy literature into geospatial search mechanisms in an archaeological context. In particular efforts to achieve this via the Archaeotools e-Science project and its use of natural language processing and a geo-spatial cross-walk service are discussed as well as potential future enhancements to the process.