Themed Evidence: Reading Experiences - Gold Standard

Exploring digital resources in search of pieces of evidence relevant to a certain research theme is a difficult and important task for humanities research. The concept of evidence is a particularly difficult one, as it relates to a fact being reported in a text, which is relevant to a certain subject of enquiry. The UK Reading Experience Database Project (UK RED) is an open-access dataset containing records that document the history of reading in Britain from 1450 to 1945. Evidence of reading presented in UK RED is drawn from published and unpublished sources as diverse as diaries, commonplace books, memoirs, sociological surveys, and criminal court and prison records. See http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK. This dataset is a gold standard for supporting the evaluation of competing methods for detecting themed evidence of "reading experience".