Archive TimeLine Summarization (ATLS): Conceptual Framework for Timeline Generation over Historical Document Collections

TL;DR

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for Archive TimeLine Summarization (ATLS) to improve access and understanding of historical document collections beyond search engine limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework extending existing TimeLine Summarization methods specifically for archive collections to generate informative and interpretable timelines.

Findings

Overview of existing TLS methods

Conceptual framework for ATLS system

Potential to enhance archive collection analysis

Abstract

Archive collections are nowadays mostly available through search engines interfaces, which allow a user to retrieve documents by issuing queries. The study of these collections may be, however, impaired by some aspects of search engines, such as the overwhelming number of documents returned or the lack of contextual knowledge provided. New methods that could work independently or in combination with search engines are then required to access these collections. In this position paper, we propose to extend TimeLine Summarization (TLS) methods on archive collections to assist in their studies. We provide an overview of existing TLS methods and we describe a conceptual framework for an Archive TimeLine Summarization (ATLS) system, which aims to generate informative, readable and interpretable timelines.