Can you help a researcher with her project on summarising fiction?

[percival]

An M.Sc. student is working on software to extract key information from fiction. She needs some data for her experiments, though. Here is her request:

"I’m an MSc student in the Speech & Language Processing program and my
dissertation project deals with extracting information from fiction
(with Amazon.com): central characters, relationships between them and
main story events. Unfortunately, no annotated corpus is available for
that purpose, and this is why I need your help.

If you are willing to help, you will find in the attached link a list
of very famous books. If you think you are familiar enough with a story
(either from reading the book or watching the film), click on its link
to fill in the information. First specify whether you watched the film
or read the book (or both). If you need to refresh your memory you can
use the links to the actual book texts. You will be requested to type
in names of central characters and define relationships between them.
You may also add the main events mentioned in the story.

Collecting this information is crucial to my project and I would
extremely appreciate it if you dedicated a few minutes to it. Don’t
feel like you have to fill in information for the whole list of titles:
a few books would be great but even one book would be well appreciated.

Feel free to email me with questions or comment.

Regards,
Sharon Givon.

** Link to the webpage **
Survey

Comments

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

Sadly, and rather shamefully, I haven't read any of the survey books...

[wahlee-98.livejournal.com]

:O

Go and get a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Now. :P

Actually, you need to read them all. :P But start with Austen.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

I agree - Austen was a lot more fun than I expected, considering all the 'pinkness' which has accumulated to her reputation. (Or I've just been hanging around the wrong people in the past. *wink*)

I have to say, though, I'm not overly reassured in the fact that a Masters candidate got the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin wrong, and spelled Alexandre Dumas's name backwards/Oriental style.

[wahlee-98.livejournal.com]

Considering Austen's reputation as a romance writer, her stories are incredibly tame. Her couples never even kiss. :P But her social satire is brilliant. :)

I have to say, though, I'm not overly reassured in the fact that a Masters candidate got the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin wrong, and spelled Alexandre Dumas's name backwards/Oriental style.

o.O I didn't look at the authors. Oops.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the thing about Austen - for an alleged romance writer, there's more squabbling and complaining and side-plots than actual courting going on, to my mind. Hardly at all 'pink'. Nearly guy-safe, even, if they can deal with the lack of testosterone. ;)

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the social criticism ... Thank you for taking the time to take the survey!

[perceval.livejournal.com]

I've alerted Sharon to this - thanks!

[jessanndi.livejournal.com]

I managed to comment on four of the titles

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Thank you!