Ewing, E. Thomas; Gad, Samah; Ramakrishnan, Naren (IEEE, 2014-10)
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.