Datasets:

biglam
/

lampeter_corpus

@@ -21,142 +21,55 @@ task_ids:
 - multi-label-classification
 - multi-class-classification
 ---
-# Dataset Card for lampeter_corpus
-## Table of Contents
-- [Dataset Description](#dataset-description)
-  - [Dataset Summary](#dataset-summary)
-  - [Supported Tasks](#supported-tasks-and-leaderboards)
-  - [Languages](#languages)
-- [Dataset Structure](#dataset-structure)
-  - [Data Instances](#data-instances)
-  - [Data Fields](#data-instances)
-  - [Data Splits](#data-instances)
-- [Dataset Creation](#dataset-creation)
-  - [Curation Rationale](#curation-rationale)
-  - [Source Data](#source-data)
-  - [Annotations](#annotations)
-  - [Personal and Sensitive Information](#personal-and-sensitive-information)
-- [Considerations for Using the Data](#considerations-for-using-the-data)
-  - [Social Impact of Dataset](#social-impact-of-dataset)
-  - [Discussion of Biases](#discussion-of-biases)
-  - [Other Known Limitations](#other-known-limitations)
-- [Additional Information](#additional-information)
-  - [Dataset Curators](#dataset-curators)
-  - [Licensing Information](#licensing-information)
-  - [Citation Information](#citation-information)
-## Dataset Description
-- **Homepage:** https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/3193
-- **Repository:** [Needs More Information]
-- **Paper:** [Needs More Information]
-- **Leaderboard:** [Needs More Information]
-- **Point of Contact:** Josef Schmied, Claudia Claridge, Rainer Siemund
-### Dataset Summary
-The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts is a collection of texts on various subject matter published between 1640 and 1740,  a time that was marked by the rise of mass publication, the development of public discourse in many areas of everyday life and last but not least, the standardisation of British English. Each text belongs to one of the following genres:  Law, Economy, Religion, Politics, Science, Miscellaneous
-### Supported Tasks and Leaderboards
-- `text-classification`: This dataset comes with dates and genre classifications for each text which can be used to finetune a model for text classification.
-### Languages
-The text in the dataset is British English. The associated BCP-47 code is `en-GB`
-## Dataset Structure
-### Data Instances
-A typical data point contains an id, a text, the head of the text (which can be missing on some occasions) and the title. The two features which can be used for classification are `date`, which is the year of publication and `genre` which classifies the text into one of six broad areas.
-```
-{
-'id': 'SciB1735',
-'text': '\nI. WHEN I read your Defence of the British Mathematicians, I could not, Sir, but admire your Courage in asserting with such undoubting Assurance things so easily disproved. This to me seemed unaccountable, till I reflected on what you say (p. 32.) when upon my having appealed to every thinking Reader, whether it be possible to frame any clear Conception of Fluxions, you express yourself in the following manner, "Pray, Sir, who are those thinking Readers you ap\npeal to? Are they Geometricians, or Persons wholly ignorant of Geometry? If the former, I leave it to them: If the latter, I ask how well are they qualified to judge of the Method of Fluxions"? It must be acknowledged you seem by this Dilemma secure in the favour of one Part of your Readers, and the ignorance of the other. I am nevertheless persuaded there are fair and candid Men among the Mathematicians. And for those who are not Mathematicians, I shall endeavour so to unveil this Mystery, [TRUNCATED]',
-'date': '1735',
-'genre': 'Science', '
-head': 'A DEFENCE OF FREE-THINKING IN Mathematics; &c.\n',
-'title': 'A defence of free-thinking in mathematics [...]'
-}
-```
-### Data Fields
-The dataset contains the following fields:
-- `id`: Unique identifier("string"),
-- `text`: ext in the document("string"),
-- `date`: Date of publication("date64"),
-- `genre`: Broad classification("string"),
-- `head`: Often same as title. Can be missing("string"),
-- `title`: Title of document("string")
-### Data Splits
-Train: 120
-## Dataset Creation
-### Curation Rationale
-The period covered by the Lampeter Corpus, 1640 to 1740, marks a crucial period in English history and the elaboration of English as a multi-purpose language. The texts selected for the corpus reflect the standardisation process of English and historical developments between the outbreak of the Civil War and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. To meet the needs of linguists and historians alike, the Lampeter project has attempted to create a balanced corpus rather than a randomly chosen archive or collection. A balanced corpus, then, is characterised by several transparent sampling criteria.
-### Source Data
-#### Initial Data Collection and Normalization
-The original data is selected according to the following criteria:
-- Complete texts only, including dedications, prefaces, postscripts, etc.
-- Texts are of varying length, ranging from c. 3,000 to c. 20,000 words.
-- Each author appears only once to avoid idiosyncratic language use.
-- Major literary figures of the time were excluded since their writing style can be studied in other, existing collections.
-- Generally, only first editions of the texts; later editions only if changes were made by the original authors, thus ensuring the authenticity of the language.
-#### Who are the source language producers?
-Authors of texts between 1640-1740
-### Annotations
-#### Annotation process
-N/A
-#### Who are the annotators?
-N/A
-### Personal and Sensitive Information
-N/A
-## Considerations for Using the Data
-### Social Impact of Dataset
-N/A
-### Discussion of Biases
-The social biases of the time in terms of race, sex, gender, etc. might be encountered in this dataset
-### Other Known Limitations
-None
-## Additional Information
-### Dataset Curators
-Josef Schmied, Claudia Claridge, Rainer Siemund
-### Licensing Information
-Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
-### Citation Information
-University of Oxford, The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts, Oxford Text Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/3193.

 - multi-label-classification
 - multi-class-classification
 ---
+# The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts
+120 complete tracts and pamphlets published in England between 1640 and 1740 (earliest dated text 1641, latest 1739), compiled at Chemnitz University of Technology by Josef Schmied, Claudia Claridge and Rainer Siemund with funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and distributed by the [Oxford Text Archive](https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/3193). The texts come from the Tract Collection of the Founders' Library at the University of Wales, Lampeter, largely a bequest of the Bowdler family.
+The corpus is balanced by construction: six subject domains × ten decades from the 1640s to the 1730s × two texts each. All 120 texts have different authors; major literary figures were excluded deliberately, and only first editions were used apart from a few later editions revised by their original authors. Individual tracts run 3,000–20,000 words. They were keyed directly from the 17th- and 18th-century originals rather than from modern editions, so original spelling, punctuation and word division are retained — expect unnormalised orthography before pointing any modern lexicon-based tool at it.
+## Fields
+| field | notes |
+| --- | --- |
+| `id` | e.g. `SciB1735` — domain prefix, sequence letter, year |
+| `text` | body paragraphs, joined (see below) |
+| `date` | year of publication, parsed from the last four characters of `id` |
+| `genre` | `Law`, `Economy`, `Religion`, `Politics`, `Science` or `Miscellaneous`, derived from the first character of `id`; 20 texts each |
+| `head` | first heading in the body; empty for 14 of the 120 texts |
+| `title` | short title |
+> [!WARNING]
+> The repo still ships a legacy Python loading script, which `datasets` no longer runs (`RuntimeError: Dataset scripts are no longer supported`). Until it is converted to Parquet, work from the TEI XML in the OTA record.
+## What `text` is not
+`text` is assembled from the `<p>` elements of the TEI `<body>` only. The `<front>` matter (title pages, dedications, prefaces) and `<back>` matter (postscripts, appendices) are dropped, as is any non-paragraph content inside the body. On the OTA TEI file that leaves roughly 935,000 whitespace-separated tokens against the 1,193,385 words reported for the full corpus. The missing fifth is precisely the paratext the compilers went out of their way to include: the corpus was built to hold complete texts, title page to FINIS. Nine of the 120 texts wrap several sub-texts in a `<group>`, and only the first sub-text's body is carried across.
+The TEI headers also hold Wing STC numbers (on 72 of 120 texts), Lampeter shelfmarks, print place, printer and bookseller names, and page format (on 62). None of that reaches these fields; read the source XML if you need it.
+## Use
+- Diachronic study of Early Modern English over a decade-balanced sample — `date` plus `text`.
+- Register and subject-domain comparison across the six areas.
+- `genre` classification, bearing in mind that 120 documents at 20 per class is evaluation-sized, not training-sized, and that the perfectly balanced design flatters accuracy figures.
+Selection compounds: what one Welsh college library happened to hold, narrowed by a single family's bequest, narrowed again by the compilers' sampling frame. Most tracts were printed in London — a consequence of how printing and press licensing were organised in early modern Britain, not of the topics covered.
+## Licence
+CC BY-SA 3.0, per the Oxford Text Archive record. Share-alike propagates to derivatives.
+## Citation
+```
+@misc{20.500.12024/3193,
+  title = {The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts},
+  author = {Schmied, Josef and Claridge, Claudia and Siemund, Rainer},
+  url = {http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/3193},
+  note = {Oxford Text Archive},
+  copyright = {Distributed by the University of Oxford under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License}
+}
+```
+Corpus description: Siemund, Rainer and Claudia Claridge (1997). "The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts". *ICAME Journal* 21, 61–70. Full manual: Claridge, Claudia (1999/2003), *"Life is ruled and governed by opinion": The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts. Manual of Information*.