Data mining of older astronomical publications

[Kevin Paxson]

Hi everyone. I have recently been working with Matthew Templeton in
creating spreadsheets of older observations in the Harvard Annals (33
and 63) and other data sources. I am amazed at the quantity of
observations and data in the literature. While I am waiting for
clarification on potential duplication of observers and observations
in 1912AnHar-63, I have started entering past observations of R LEO
going back to 1839 by Argelander, Pogson, Baxendell, Schmidt,
Pickering, Cannon and others. So far data density looks very good but
I am only 30% finished on spreadsheet entry of the older R LEO data.
I will be submitting this data to the AAVSO and I hope to potentially
author or co-author a paper on R LEO utilizing these older
observations. I believe that much can be learned from older
observations in the literature and I hope to stimulate interest in
this endeavor. Kevin B. Paxson - PKV