2026-09-10T09:44:57Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27547 2026-09-10T05:38:42Z ddc:004 open_access

Qualitative Spatial Representation for Material Documents Bell, Mark Stell, John G. Qualitative spatial representation QSR spatial text document understanding information extraction Allen interval relations archives 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. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Mark Bell and John G. Stell 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 393, 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.3 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-275474 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.3 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode