A research breakthrough in the dating of historical books
UL FKKT
Date of publication:
Heritage scientists can now date historical paper using only infrared light and computational analysis of spectroscopic data. In the research of postdoctoral researcher Dr. Floriana Coppola and colleagues, which is published in the top scientific journal 'Journal of the American Chemical Society', shows that it is possible to date paper extremely accurately, even to 2 years. An uncertainty this low is not possible with any other method, much less with a non-destructive method.
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Dr. Floriana Coppola analyzed 100 books from the general collection of the NUK, from the period 1851-2000, a transitional period in the history of stationery. She measured a total of 3,000 NIR spectra, which she analyzed with three machine learning algorithms. In this way, in cooperation with the research team, she tested how the variability of paper composition and natural decomposition affect dating models. The results showed that the common spectral properties of the cellulose and protein structure are more important for the predictions, but not the decomposition, which does not significantly affect the accuracy of the predictions.
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Dr. Coppola works at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the University of Ljubljana as part of the prestigious EU project of the Marie Curie program.
The Laboratory for Heritage Science Ljubljana (Floriana Coppola, Jernej Markelj, Matija Strlič), the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Cagliari, Italy (Luca Frigau, Claudio Conversano) and the National and University Library of Slovenia (Jasna Malešič) participated in the research.
You can read more about the research in the article " Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Machine Learning for Accurate Dating of Historical Books ".
