This article outlines how AI methods can be used to identify image captions in a large dataset of digitised historical book illustrations. This dataset includes over a million images from 68,000 books published between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, covering works of literature, history, geography, and philosophy. The article has two primary objectives. First, it suggests the added value of captions in making digitized illustrations more searchable by picture content in online archives. To further this objective, we describe the methods we have used to identify captions, which can effectively be re-purposed and applied in different contexts. Second, we suggest how this research leads to new understandings of the semantics and significance of the captions of historical book illustrations. The findings discussed here mark a critical intervention in the fields of digital humanities, book history, and illustration studies.
| Artificial Intelligence |
| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |
