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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 2d

History PhD students at Scottish universities may be interested in this upcoming SGSAH Discipline+ Catalyst in person training workshop in St Andrews: Coding Literacy for Historians in the Age of AI - 17-18 Oct, 2025 spatialhistory.net/info/coding.... Limited places; registration by 15 October

Coding Literacy for Historians in the Age of AI

spatialhistory.net

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Reposted by Konrad Lawson

Ben Schmidt @bschmidt.bsky.social · 10d

Despite the gutting of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the dept of Ed *did* manage to release 2024 college major counts in the usual format, so I can run it through the same code I do every year. First off, the change since peak of the largest fields -- another year of drops.

A line chart captioned "The big humanities majors were mostly still falling in 2024", showing drops since 2008 for most humanities fields between 10% (Study of the Arts) to 68% (religion) with history, english, and foreign languages all clustered around 50-55%

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 11d

Today enjoyed browsing the UBC collection of Japanese maps of the Tokugawa era: open.library.ubc.ca/collections/...

Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era - UBC Library Open Collections

Learning, knowledge, research, insight: welcome to the world of UBC Library, the second-largest academic research library in Canada.

open.library.ubc.ca

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 11d

That is great, so nice to discover things like that

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Reposted by Konrad Lawson

Jeremiah McCall (he/him) @gamingthepast.bsky.social · 14d

Check this out! JapanLab at UT Austin to "re-imagine Japanese Studies for the 21st century" And they have games!!!
www.utjapanlab.com/games

Games — JapanLab

www.utjapanlab.com

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 25d

2/2 Continued:
スタンダード和英辞典 1946 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792
和英対照明解新辞典 1946 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126444
世界新語辞典 1949 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126445
和英英和時事要語辞典 1953 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2465788
模範漢和新辞典 1954 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2439778
現代中国人名辞典 (with nice Wade-Giles lookup too!) 1957 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3020572

国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション

dl.ndl.go.jp

Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 25d

Some (out of copyright?) downloadable Japanese dictionaries of (very) different sorts from postwar at NDL:
最新時事新語辞典 1949 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126434/...
最新国際問題辞典 1948 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1444664
ポケットスケッチ事典 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1338675
図解新事典 1949 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1169556
新聞雑誌語辞典 1948 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126422

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Reposted by Konrad Lawson

Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · Dec 20

Little Free Libraries are Hokora for books. Actually using them isn't the point. They're shrines for the books they contain.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

I did a wee head to head test of both solutions: bsky.app/profile/kml....

Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

Reporting back on this: did a test with a set of (hastily taken, in poor light) photographs of book pages, then ran them on both the ndlkotenocr-lite vs Google Document AI. Example result attached here, plus check of the first three lines. Also: had to modify the ndl code to respect exif rotation.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

Reporting back on this: did a test with a set of (hastily taken, in poor light) photographs of book pages, then ran them on both the ndlkotenocr-lite vs Google Document AI. Example result attached here, plus check of the first three lines. Also: had to modify the ndl code to respect exif rotation.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

Thanks! Will give it a shot!

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Reposted by Konrad Lawson

Lillian McIntyre @lillianmcintyre.com · Sep 6

I’ve heard the best is the OCR tool developed by the National Diet Library, which can even handle furigana at times: github.com/ndl-lab/ndlk...

GitHub - ndl-lab/ndlkotenocr-lite: NDL古典籍OCR-Liteのアプリケーションのリポジトリ（ソースコードを含む）

NDL古典籍OCR-Liteのアプリケーションのリポジトリ（ソースコードを含む）. Contribute to ndl-lab/ndlkotenocr-lite development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

Wonderful Lillian, thanks for sharing this. I'll have a good look at this.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

That explains it!

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

But the text around it differs enough I wonder if perhaps another (revised) edition?

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

Nice! 龙飞莫遏 apparently! :)

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

I remember ages ago, shopping some of the MacOS classic and early OSX OCR solutions back when living in Japan (and I was much easier to impress with a mere 70-90% accuracy in those days), but not sure what the main goto solutions are these days.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 6

Anyone working with Japanese texts: interested in your OCR experiences. I find usual suspects (tesseract, ABBYY, direct use of LLMs) do rubbish job with 縦書き Japanese vertical text scans (manga-ocr works only on short text). Google Document AI works fantastic but $$. What works well for you?

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Sep 4

There is a short Kon Wajirō (今和次郎) lecture clip from NHK 放送大学on 個人と集団 (mention of his challenges with 考現学approach) YouTube filmed 1972, just a year before he passed.

今和次郎［早稲田建築アーカイブス：036］

▼早稲田建築アーカイブス http://waarchives.org/ 「早稲田建築アーカイブス」は、早稲田大学建築学科創設100周年記念事業のひとつとして、日本の建築を支えてきた早稲田建築のさまざまな人々の、映像・証言の記録を公開するものです。

youtu.be

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Aug 31

Sunday afternoon walk in Chatelherault Country Park. #scotland

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Reposted by Konrad Lawson

NCC (北米日本研究資料調整協議会) @nccjapaninfo.bsky.social · Aug 28

How do organizations like the National Diet Library tackle issues of long-term preservation? Does anyone even know how to use a CD anymore? 💿👀 Read this month’s NDL newsletter to learn about their activities and other fascinating materials! www.ndl.go.jp/en/publicati...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Aug 27

🤣

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Reposted by Konrad Lawson

NCC (北米日本研究資料調整協議会) @nccjapaninfo.bsky.social · Aug 24

Did you know that as of Feb 2025 the National Diet Library offers a selection of remote photoduplication services to PDF? Find the latest on the possibilities/requirements for these services on the Resource Sharing Committee’s 6/9 update on NDL services! #NDLOutreach guides.nccjapan.org/illdd/news

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Aug 27

yay! :-)

Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · Aug 27

Just noticed that Nichibunken's open access collection has a full text OA copy of book "Gender and Modernity: Rereading Japanese Women's Magazines" (152MB) nichibun.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/6419 - individual chapters can also be downloaded. Guess I don't need to wait for that inter-library loan.

国際日本文化研究センター学術リポジトリ

国際日本文化研究センターの研究成果を蓄積し, 公開しています. The research results of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies are accumulated and published.

nichibun.repo.nii.ac.jp

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