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C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
V
ISUALIZATION FOR
C
HANGES
IN
R
ELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN
H
ISTORICAL
F
IGURES IN
C
HRONICLES
M
ASAHIKO
I
TOH AND
M
INA
A
KAISHI
Abstract
A huge number of historical documents accumulated over a long period of
time are currently being digitized. This provides opportunities for ease of
access and for analysing historical facts and figures. One aspect of analysis
is to understand the political and social environments of the past.
However, it is difficult for us to analyse and obtain insight into the past
from such documents. This chapter proposes an interactive visualization
system to extract networks of historical figures from historical data and to
show time-varying changes in their relationships. It enables users to
explore changes in the structure of the network interactively. Moreover, it
extracts characteristics of each relationship, such as hostile or friendly
relations, and visualizes them on the network. It enables us to understand
changes in past societies more clearly by exploring changes in
relationships between people.
1 Introduction
Nowadays, almost all publications are in digital format. In addition to this,
digitization of documents and archives is one of the major undertakings of
libraries and museums. Historical records are of particular interest not only
to historians but also to politicians and social scientists. Archives in digital
format allow easy access to historical data and facilitate text and data
mining, as well as visualization techniques, to understand historical events.
Visualization tools are particularly helpful for analysis, making possible a
more analytical look at the past.
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