Chinese Text Project: A dynamic digital library of premodern Chinese

Abstract

This article presents technical approaches and innovations in digital library design developed during the design and implementation of the Chinese Text Project, a widely-used, large-scale full-text digital library of premodern Chinese writing. By leveraging a combination of domain-optimized Optical Character Recognition, a purpose-designed crowdsourcing system, and an Application Programming Interface (API), this project simultaneously provides a sustainable transcription system, search interface and reading environment, as well as an extensible platform for transcribing and working with premodern Chinese textual materials. By means of the API, intentionally loosely integrated text mining tools are used to extend the platform, while also being reusable independently with materials from other sources and in other languages.