Culturomic Explorations of Literary Prominence Using Google Books: A Pilot Study

The availability of databases of digitised literary materials, such as Google Books, Europeana and historical newspaper databases, has revolutionised many disciplines, e.g., linguistics and history. So far, the use of digitised materials has not been very frequent in the history of books and the his...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inKnygotyra Vol. 78; pp. 111 - 139
Main Authors Tyrkkö, Jukka, Mäkinen, Ilkka
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Vilnius University Press 27.06.2022
Subjects
big data
Comparative literature
culturomics
Google Books
literary history
Literary prominence
literature
Litteraturvetenskap
prominence
quantitative analysis
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The availability of databases of digitised literary materials, such as Google Books, Europeana and historical newspaper databases, has revolutionised many disciplines, e.g., linguistics and history. So far, the use of digitised materials has not been very frequent in the history of books and the history of reading. This article presents tools, methodologies and practices that offer new possibilities in the study of book history and the history of reading. The use of these tools makes it possible to study vast amounts of data quickly and effectively, to present results in helpful visualisations, to make it possible to follow the line of reasoning and, if necessary, to check the reliability of the research by presenting the data for control. The examples presented are drawn from the Google Books database using a simple piece of software that exploits the API of the Google Books Ngram Viewer tool that is available free of charge.
ISSN:0204-2061
2345-0053
2345-0053
DOI:10.15388/Knygotyra.2022.78.108