Reception Reader: Exploring Text Reuse in Early Modern British Publications
This tool addresses the need for efficient text reuse analysis in historical literary studies, though it is incremental as it builds on existing data sources and interfaces.
The researchers tackled the problem of studying text reuse in early modern British publications by developing the Reception Reader, a web tool that visualizes and explores text reuse in EEBO-TCP and ECCO data, streamlining research tasks with interactive features for analysis.
The Reception Reader is a web tool for studying text reuse in the Early English Books Online (EEBO-TCP) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) data. Users can: 1) explore a visual overview of the reception of a work, or its incoming connections, across time based on shared text segments, 2) interactively survey the details of connected documents, and 3) examine the context of reused text for "close reading". We show examples of how the tool streamlines research and exploration tasks, and discuss the utility and limitations of the user interface along with its current data sources.