Are Searches in OCR-generated Archives Trustworthy?: An Analysis of Digital Newspaper Archives

Jørgen Burchardt

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, 2023, vol. 64, issue 1, 31-54

Abstract: Digitised archives are revolutionary tools for research that, in a few seconds, generate results that earlier often took years to obtain. But do they provide all results for the terms searched for? The accuracy of searches was tested by performing sample searches of leading newspaper databases. The test revealed several weaknesses in the search process, including an average 18 percent error rate for single words in body text, and a far higher error rates for advertisements. Such high error rates encourage a critical look at the 20-year-old sector. Although these errors can be reduced by a re-digitation and with new improved OCR engines and new search algorithms, searches will nevertheless return manipulated results. In response, and to identify infringed bias and skewed representation, database owners need to provide thorough metadata to ensure source criticism.

Keywords: optical character recognition; historical archive; source criticism; research methodology; Historische Archive; Quellenkritik; Forschungsmethodik; OCR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jbwg-2023-0003 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jbwige:v:64:y:2023:i:1:p:31-54:n:9

DOI: 10.1515/jbwg-2023-0003

Access Statistics for this article

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook is currently edited by Dieter Ziegler

More articles in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().