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Patricia Gael PhD Candidate, British Literature, PSU

Eighteenth-Century Book P ublishing in London and “Big D ata”. Incorporating Quantitative W ork into Traditional H umanities R esearch. Patricia Gael PhD Candidate, British Literature, PSU. Penn State DH Interest Group Meet-Up April 26, 2013. The Research Problem.

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Patricia Gael PhD Candidate, British Literature, PSU

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  1. Eighteenth-Century Book Publishing in London and “Big Data” Incorporating Quantitative Work into Traditional Humanities Research Patricia GaelPhD Candidate, British Literature, PSU Penn State DH Interest Group Meet-Up April 26, 2013

  2. The Research Problem • How can the mid-eighteenth-century London market for poetry, drama, and fiction be characterized? Thomas Rowlandson, Bookseller and Author (Source: Wikimedia)

  3. Records of Published Texts • The English Short Title Catalogue, or ESTC (a collaboration between the British Library and the University of California Riverside), lists more than 18,000 titles published in London between 1737 and 1749.

  4. Organizing Records of Published Texts • ESTC search capabilities are limited, and records cannot be sorted within the database. • Organizing, categorizing, and annotating the records required importing them into a structured database.

  5. Transforming the Data • ESTC records are stored in MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) format, which had to be converted to a format that could be imported into Filemaker. • I chose XML. MARC XML

  6. Filemaker Database

  7. Eighteenth-Century Texts • More than two-thirds of the books are available through Penn State’s subscription to Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO).

  8. Annotating the Filemaker Records

  9. Results Percentages of Imaginative Literature in ESTC by Genre, 1737-49

  10. Results (cont.) Percentage of ESTC Drama by Format, 1737-49 Percentage of ESTC Poetry by Format, 1737-49 Percentage of ESTC Fiction by Format, 1737-49

  11. Results (cont.) Typical Advertised Title-Page Retail Prices by Genre, Format, and Length

  12. Results (cont.) Attribution of New and Reprinted Published DramaOriginally in English, 1737-1739 Attribution of New and Reprinted Published Fiction Originally in English, 1737-1739 Attribution of New and Reprinted Published Poetry Originally in English, 1737-1739

  13. Long-Term Challenges • How can problematic data be presented quantitatively without implying definitive and exact statistics? • Can the data be published alongside the study? • Probably not: UC-R maintains the rights to the data • How can the data be preserved for continuing use?

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