Discovering emerging topics in textual corpora of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums institutions

Abstract

For some decades now, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) institutions have provided access to information resources in digital format. Although some datasets are openly available, they are often not used to their full potential. Recently, approaches such as the so-called Labs within GLAM institutions promote the reuse of digital collections in innovative and inspiring ways. In this article, we explore a straightforward computational procedure to identify emerging topics in periodical materials such as newspapers, bibliographies, and journals. The method is illustrated in three use cases based on public digital collections. This type of tools are expected to promote further usage by researchers of the digital collections.