• In the Spotlight

  • Text search available for some playbills on http://blplaybills.org

Just wanted to let people know about a site that tries to add text search to some of the BL playbill data that has been made publically available: http://blplaybills.org.

The catalogues covered are digitised volumes of theatrical English, Scottish, and Irish playbills between 1600 - 1902 (https://data.bl.uk/playbills/):

Playbills 1 - 107
Playbills 109 - 123
Playbills 126,129,131
Playbills 134 - 137
Playbills 139 - 143
Playbills 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 161, 166, 168, 175, 178
Playbills 179 - 187
Playbills 193, 199, 204, 212, 213, 218, 225, 233, 234, 252
Playbills 262 - 264
Playbills 266, 276, 278, 280, 282, 285, 287, 291, 297, 306, 324, 325, 327, 329, 330, 348, 358
Playbills 400 - 404
Playbills 406 - 410
Playbills 412 - 417
Playbills 420
Playbills 424 - 427
Playbills 429

Playbills 126, 129 and 166 are currently missing.

General notes about the site:

  • The text was generated using optical character recognition (OCR) software - so it can be quite rough
  • You can search for phrases, and these do not need to be in quote marks; exact matches are returned first, then partial matches
  • You can view/download a hires version of the playbill
  • You can view the catalogue the playbill belongs to in the BL viewer
  • You can copy the OCR text to the clipboard
  • You can filter the results by date, theatre, location, catalogue

Hope it proves helpful.

  • mia

  • Post #2

@saksupple thanks for posting about your site - it'll be so useful for people trying to work with the playbills.

    This is so helpful. I've been testing it this evening with a search for Mrs Young, although not every result is for 'Mrs' it is still providing some amazing finds... for example a playbill from the theatre in Kelso on 30 July 1827, Mrs Young isn't making an appearance although Mr Young and Miss Young are present. However, _____WB$wombat$check$this$function_____(this) is a great find for me as I know from my research that one of Mr and Mrs Young's sons was born in Berwick-upon-Tweed that year but I'd not yet found any other evidence of them working in the area. I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to find it without this search tool.

    Frisby Thanks for the feedback. Good to know it's been of help. As you say the way the search works can be strange (giving all occurrences of Mrs) , but nice to see that perseverance paid off!

    • mia likes this.
      6 days later

      Hello saksupple
      Thanks for setting up your site and for letting us know. Text-searching with OCR does provide some promising entry points for researchers and can provide encouragement to look closer at materials. I just always hope that people using full-text searches with early printed type do realise that the hit-rate will often be quite low and is certainly not comprehensive (this is very much the case for material like the database of 17th- and 18th-century Burney newspapers and even with the British Newpaper Archive. Still, it’s definitely of some use.

      Given my personal obsession with maritime history, I was very pleased to find an historical namesake, Mr Algar, selling tickets for a nautical drama in 1840 ...
      https://twitter.com/cbarnacles/status/1041362011706322944?s=21

      I will refer to your site and search facility in some upcoming workshops on playbills. Really pleased the Library’s open data has inspired the work you have done!

        christian
        Hi Christian,

        Yep, I was concerned about the quality of the search using OCR text. I enhanced the images of the playbills significantly to give the OCR process a better chance of producing reasonable results.

        It seems the text is good enough to provide something useful - but as you say it is imperfect.

        Glad it was of help, and it will be interesting to see how it is received in your workshops.

        Thanks very much for the feedback.

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