Josh Rhodes

Ran the same OCR models on 68 pages of historic newspaper. Every model hallucinated or looped.

DeepSeek-OCR-2, LightOnOCR-2, GLM-OCR – all melt down on dense newspaper columns.

You can try yourself using this @hf.co dataset: huggingface.co/datasets/dav...

Lovely videos from @bucksarchives.bsky.social showing value of archival work. ALSO a perfect demonstration of why older traditional NLP approaches to Named Entity Recognition (NER) fail in historical contexts where people and place are not always mutually exclusive, nor easily distinguishable.

Image of part of 1851 England Census return

Any ideas what the word/s between 'necessary' and 'Registrar' are in this marginal note from the 1851 English census? I thought I was pretty sure but keep doubting if I've got it right!

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

Was Manchester really as segregated as Engels said? What kept the rich and poor apart.... if anything? My first article is out today in @historicaljnl.bsky.social and I'm so pleased to share it with you all! doi:10.1017/S0018246X25101246
@stjohnscollege.bsky.social @camunicampop.bsky.social

High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

Job Advert to join my team at UCL

💭Lecturer in Humanities Data Science
💭£54,931 - £57,979
💭Open Ended Contract
💭Great interdisciplinary team

Closes 15 September 2025

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

A colour photograph of a hand holding a water damaged Nokia box. On it are three men in business attire playing football.

If you've ever wondered what life in an archive is like, we've discovered this 2005 mobile phone box we've somehow got that's a completely accurate depiction.

A BBC news headline which says “Penguin says it did “all necessary due diligence” with The Salt Path

I’m no expert but I would’ve got a person to do it.

Excited to try this out! 👇

A poster advertising the 'Wills Project Transcribathon' on Thursday 24 July, 1-4pm BST, in the Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Exeter, and on zoom. The poster features black text on green and yellow backgrounds, and three images - a box of folded will manuscripts, an unfolded will manuscript, and the painting Thomas Braithwaite of Ambleside making his will, Abbot Hall, 1607. Photo: Lakeland Arts.

Wow - so many people already signed up for our Wills Project Transcribathon later this month! 🙏

If you drop by you can transcribe some lines & help make 25,000 English wills more accessible for all.

In person & online, join us here: willstranscribathon.eventbrite.com

#EarlyModern 🗃️ #Palaeography

The development of political procession routes and policing the right to march in London, 1780–1915 Abstract. Processions and marches were an integral part of popular politics, protest and urban life. This article maps the routes of 101 civic, political a

My new article on protest marches and processions in London,1780-1915, has just been published online!

Thanks to the editors and reviewers of Historical Research for making it such a smooth process.

academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

Promotional image advertising 'Wills Project Transcribathon, Thursday 24 July, 1-4pm BST, Digital Humanities Lab University of Exeter and on Zoom. The image also features a portrait of a man making his will, a photo of a box of wills and a page of a will.

📢WILLS TRANSCRIBATHON KLAXON📢

Join us on Thursday 24 July to transcribe wills and go behind the scenes of the wills project!

In person and on Zoom - full details & registration here: willstranscribathon.eventbrite.com

#EarlyModern 🗃️ #transcription @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social

Like Great-Grandparent, Like Great-Grandchild? Multigenerational Mobility in American History Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

New @nber.org working paper from our colleague Kasey Buckles @kaseybuckles.bsky.social (along with Joe Price and Zach Ward), "Grandchild? Multigenerational Mobility in American History." Check it out:

www.nber.org/papers/w33923

📢 new paper klaxon 📢

@felixkersting.bsky.social and I reconsider agrarian inequality in German and Swedish history and the role played (or not played) by landlordism in the road to fascism in Germany and democracy in Sweden. I’m very happy about this one!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Welcome to the archives.

Very proud to see @charmianmansell.bsky.social on this shortlist!

I have finished posting the 420,000 words in Thomas Turner's diary of 18thC rural life ( as transcribed by Dean K Worcester). This is significantly more than the published edition (Vaisey, 1984). www.thomasturner.org.uk It's a work in progress. #18c

Historians use data science to mine the past | PNAS Historians use data science to mine the past

✨✨Maps & newspaper research from LwM & MRM teams (@danielwilson.bsky.social @joshrhodes.bsky.social @jonhistorian61.bsky.social @nottinauta.bsky.social @ruthahnert.bsky.social @npedrazzini.bsky.social @kallewesterling.bsky.social + more) featured in @pnas.org this week!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A map of part of the Slow Ways network, covering Wales and the middle of England. We can see all towns and cities connected by straight lines, revealing the structure of the walking network.

Just finished a day with the #SlowWays team in #Birmingham, charting big plans for a giant extension of our people-powered walking network.

Can't wait to share more.

❤️⭐🐌⚡

Are there any UK based academics out there who've successfully claimed back withheld tax from a US fellowship? I'm trying to claim tax back from a Huntington Library fellowship and have no clue if I'm filling in the right forms! 🤔

Let me know if this makes sense! If not, happy to arrange a call.

4. Repeat this process for the osopenroads files (since some addresses are linked to only gb1900 and some only to osopenroads).

3. The scot_1851_gb1900_recidlkup.tsv file provides a bridge between the recids in the I-CeM file you've downloaded to the gb1900 map data in the scot_1851_gb1900.tsv. Once linked, you can map any of your variables in the downloaded I-CeM file using the geometry data in the scot_1851_gb1900.tsv file

2. Link the 'recid' field in your Govan I-CeM data to the 'recid' field in the scot_1851_gb1900_recidlkup.tsv file. Then link the 'gb1900_uid' in the scot_1851_gb1900_recidlkup.tsv file to the 'gb1900_uid' field in the scot_1851_gb1900.tsv file.

1. Download the Govan 1851 data from icem.ukdataservice.ac.uk

Hi Isaac, Great that AddressGB might be of use to you! I might be misunderstanding what you're saying but it sounds like you're trying to geo-code the AddressGB dataset, which is itself already geo-coded? If you're interested in mapping the 1851 census data for Govan, here's what you'd have to do 1/

Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism schedule

Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism schedule

Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism schedule

Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism schedule

Here's the schedule for 'Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism', a conference that
@drhelenroche.bsky.social and I are organizing on March 28-29 for @durhamhistory.bsky.social. We'll spark fresh conversations about resistance to power—and have a few laughs too! Please join us!

Big news! The digital edition of Alice Thornton's four Books is now complete and online. There are 1,019 pages (c. 270,000 words) of Thornton’s life-writings in both modernised and semi-diplomatic versions and they are fully searchable.
#EarlyModern 🗃️ 📚 📜
thornton.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/posts/news/2...

Cambridge festival talk: the medieval French fragment of Merlin re-discovered at Cambridge University Library Back in 2022, library staff from Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Conservation & Heritage, Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory, and Collections and Academic Liaison was awarded funding from Ca…

Hey Cambridge people. If you want to hear about othe most challanging project where we pulled whole arsenal of imaging technologies. Join a talk @bird-gerhl.bsky.social & Blazej Mikula to learn more. languagecollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/2025/03/04/c... #DH @camdiglib.bsky.social #HeritageScience