Understanding the role of medical experts during a public health crisis digital tools and library resources for research on the 1918 Spanish influenza

Author

Ewing, E. Thomas ; Gad, Samah ; Ramakrishnan, N. ; Reznick, Jeffrey S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of History, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

27-30 Oct. 2014

Firstpage

39

Lastpage

46

Abstract

Humanities scholars, particularly historians of health and disease, can benefit from digitized library collections and tools such as topic modeling. Using a case study from the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, this paper explores the application of a big humanities approach to understanding the impact of a public health official on the course of the disease and the response of the public, as documented through digitized newspapers and medical periodicals.

Keywords

data mining; digital libraries; health care; medical information systems; Spanish flu epidemic; Spanish influenza; digitized library collections; digitized newspapers; humanities scholars; library resources; medical experts; medical periodicals; public health crisis digital tools; public health official; topic modeling; Cities and towns; Diseases; History; Influenza; Libraries; Public healthcare; Tag clouds; Data Mining; Disease; History; Public Health; Topic Modeling;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Big Data (Big Data), 2014 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Washington, DC

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BigData.2014.7004451

Filename

7004451