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Qualitative Spatial Representation for Material Documents

Authors Mark Bell , John G. Stell

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LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.3.pdf
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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Computing methodologies → Spatial and physical reasoning
  • Applied computing → Document management and text processing
  • Applied computing → Arts and humanities
Keywords
  • Qualitative spatial representation
  • QSR
  • spatial text
  • document understanding
  • information extraction
  • Allen interval relations
  • archives

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Abstract

This paper proposes the use of Qualitative Spatial Representation (QSR) to model the complex relationships of paper documents and books, both in their physical and digital forms. We begin with motivating examples from The National Archives' holdings, and literature, to describe the myriad ways something as simple as text on paper can be manifested, and introduce appropriate terminology. The primary focus is on the challenges of working with documents comprised of multiple pages, and understanding the relationships between the pages themselves, text items which span more than one page. We end by presenting case studies using Allen Intervals to represent relationships between physical documents, their digitised representations, and the text on the page.

Cite As Get BibTex

Mark Bell and John G. Stell. Qualitative Spatial Representation for Material Documents. In 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 393, pp. 3:1-3:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.3

Author Details

Mark Bell
  • The National Archives, Kew, UK
John G. Stell
  • University of Leeds, UK

Funding

  • Stell, John G.: Research supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ES/W003473/1) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF#2225179).

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