The Past is a Foreign Place: Improving Toponym Linking for Historical Newspapers

In this paper, we examine the application of toponym linking to digitised historical newspapers. These collections constitute the largest trove of historical text data available to researchers in the humanities. They contain varied, 昀椀ne-grained information about the past, anchored in a speci昀椀c place and time. Place names (or toponyms) are common entry points for starting exploring these collections. In this paper, we introduce a new tool for toponym linking and resolution, T-Res, a modular, 昀氀exible, and opensource pipeline, which is built on top of robust state-of-the-art approaches. We present a comprehensive step-by-step examination of this task in English, and conclude with a case study in which we show how toponym linking enables historical research in the digitised press.