Papers for

library digital teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Heritage programs transformed into structured linked data for performing arts

From Show Programs to Linked Data

Abstract: Many heritage institutions hold extensive collections of show programs. Too numerous to be cataloged individually, they remain difficult to access and are still largely undigitized. This paper presents a workflow for transforming such documents into structured, interoperable data by combining vision-language models (VLMs), a custom extension of the Linked Art ontology for the performing arts, and different approaches for automatic semantic data annotation. Using the Festival d'Avignon programs (1947--present), preserved at the Biblioth{è}que nationale de France, as a case study, we demonstrate how VLMs achieve more than 98% text transcription accuracy from heterogeneous heritage document images and how constraining large language model generation through a knowledge graph significantly reduces hallucinations in semantic annotation. We argue that this workflow opens new possibilities for large-scale, interoperable performing arts historiography, including the creation of catalogues raisonn{é}s for performing artists, a form of scholarship common in visual arts but absent in performing arts studies.

Tue 10 NovInformation Retrieval
The gist
Lots of old show programs from theaters are hard to find and not scanned into computers yet. The authors show a way to turn these paper programs into neat, digital data that computers can understand easily. They use smart tools that read images and text, organize the information carefully using a special system for art and performance, and check their work to avoid mistakes. By doing this with programs from a famous French festival, they prove the method works well and could help people study performing arts history more easily in the future.
Open → 2611.14037v1