Reception Reader: Exploring Text Reuse in Early Modern British Publications

TL;DR

The Reception Reader is a web tool that enables researchers to explore, analyze, and interpret text reuse across early modern British publications through visualizations and detailed document interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interactive web platform for studying text reuse in early modern British texts using EEBO-TCP and ECCO data sources.

Findings

Streamlines research on text reuse in early modern texts

Provides visual overview of reception and connections over time

Facilitates close reading and detailed exploration

Abstract

The Reception Reader is a web tool for studying text reuse in the Early English Books Online (EEBO-TCP) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) data. Users can: 1) explore a visual overview of the reception of a work, or its incoming connections, across time based on shared text segments, 2) interactively survey the details of connected documents, and 3) examine the context of reused text for "close reading". We show examples of how the tool streamlines research and exploration tasks, and discuss the utility and limitations of the user interface along with its current data sources.