title: Understanding the Role of Medical Experts during a Public Health Crisis Digital Tools and Library Resources for Research on the 1918 Spanish Influenza.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of History, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061.
authors.forename: E Thomas
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Ewing
authors.affiliation: Discovery Analytics Center, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA 22203.
authors.forename: Samah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gad
authors.affiliation: History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 20894.
authors.forename: Naren
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ramakrishnan
authors.forename: Jeffrey S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Reznick
keywords: Data Mining; Disease; History; Public Health; Topic Modeling