1. What is a Named Entity?
Lotte Wilms
Koninklijke Bibliotheek
14 June 2013 - Belgrade
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2. A named entity is a unique identifier of entities.
• PERSON: named person, family, or certain designated non-human
individuals
• ORGANIZATION: named corporate, governmental, or other organizational
entity
• LOCATION: name of politically or geographically defined location (cities,
provinces, countries, international regions, bodies of water, mountains,
etc.) and astronomical locations.
Source: 1999 Named Entity Recognition Task Definition, version 1.4, August 27 1999.
ftp://jaguar.ncsl.nist.gov/ace/phase1/ne99_taskdef_v1_4.pdf
PERS: Yellow, ORG: Orange, LOC: Blue 2

3. Where are the named enities in the following
sentence?
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The American couple Bill and Susan Jones were
such great fans of Apple’s computers that they
took them everywhere, such as the Big Apple,
California and even to the Smiths.

4. The American couple Bill and Susan Jones were
such great fans of Apple’s computers that they
took them everywhere, such as the Big Apple,
California and even to the Smiths.
PERS: Yellow, ORG: Orange, LOC: Blue 4

5. Special cases with named entities
Otto and Vivika Heino
Multi-modifier, multi-name expressions
and nested expressions
Library and Archives Canada
Nested expression! Part of the
organisation name, so not tagged as
location
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Image courtesy of Padraic Ryan

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Special cases with named entities
Entity expressions that modify non-taggables
and entities that possess other entities
Apple computer
Norway’s Parliament
Image courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee

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Special cases with named entities
Taggable Aliases and definitive articles
Acronyms
Aliases
Only for established alternate
way of referring
IBMNew York = the Big Apple
Only include the article when it is
commonly associated with an entity

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Guidelines for the entity PERSON
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Regular titles
are not part of
NE, but titles
as prince/
king/president
/etc. are. Use
common
sense here 
Appositives
are too!
the Clintons
-s is alternate
form
Scooby Doo
Even fictional
characters are NE,
human or animal

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“I pray to God” vs. “he feels like a god”.
Only tag god when an actual God is
meant
Other noteworthy guidelines
Guidelines for the entity PERSON
Saint George killed the dragon.
Do not tag religious titles or specifiers
The U.S. Vice President
The U.S. Vice President is not a unique
attribution, so only tag location
My cat Dot is very lazy.
Animals haves names as well
He won the Nobel prize.
Do not tag diseases/weather
formations/prizes/laws/etc. that are
named after people
The Bill Gates of the Netherlands
Do not tag Bill Gates, as this refers not
to him, but to someone like him. Only
tag location.

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Guidelines for the entity LOCATION
“Named heavenly bodies, continents, countries, provinces, counties, cities, regions, districts,
towns, villages, neighborhoods, airports, military bases, railways, railroads, highways,
bridges, street names, street addresses, oceans, seas, straits, bays, channels, sounds, rivers,
islands, lakes, national parks, mountains, fictional or mythical locations, and certain
structures, such as the Eiffel Tower and Washington Monument, that were built primarily as
monuments.”
France The market place of Guestrow Mount Fiji
Designators that are
integrally associated
with a location are
also tagged.

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Guidelines for the entity LOCATION
Hyundai of Korea, Inc. Hyundai in Korea
The White House, Washington, D.C.
White House is an alias
for U.S. president’s
organisation

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Guidelines for the entity LOCATION
Mississippi River west bank A German newspaper in Bamberg
Do not tag adjectival
forms of locations
Do not tag
unspecific
locations such as
the South or the
Middle East
Do tag specific
regions, such as
the Auvergne

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Guidelines for the entity ORGANISATION
Tag “stock exchanges, multinational organizations, businesses, TV or radio stations, political
parties, religions or religious groups, orchestras, bands, or musical groups, unions, non-
generic governmental entity names such as “Congress” or “Chamber of Deputies,” sports
teams and armies (unless designated only by country names, which are tagged as LOCATION),
as well as fictional organizations.”
The Beatles The labor party De Tweede Kamer

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Guidelines for the entity ORGANISATION
Four Seasons Hotel
Ghostbusters
Proper names referring
to meeting places
where organisational
activities occur are also
LOC.
‘the police’, ‘the
government’ and other
generic names are not
tagged.
However, the Dutch army is tagged!

15. PERS: Yellow, ORG: Orange, LOC: Blue 15
Correct or not?
Lotte was reading Romeo and Juliet on the plane to the Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade.
The Volkskrant is a newspaper that is printed by De Persgroep Nederland in Amsterdam.
My aunt Betty owns a dog Bob that loves going out to the Scheveningen beach.
Lotte was reading Romeo and Juliet on the plane to the Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade.
My aunt Betty owns a dog Bob that loves going out to the Scheveningen beach.

16. A named entity is a unique identifier of entities.
• PERSON: named person, family, or certain designated non-human
individuals
• ORGANIZATION: named corporate, governmental, or other organizational
entity
• LOCATION: name of politically or geographically defined location (cities,
provinces, countries, international regions, bodies of water, mountains,
etc.) and astronomical locations.
However, use common sense and keep it mind what you want to achieve!
Source: 1999 Named Entity Recognition Task Definition, version 1.4, August 27 1999.
ftp://jaguar.ncsl.nist.gov/ace/phase1/ne99_taskdef_v1_4.pdf
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Questions?
Ask me almost anything!
@lottewilms
Lotte.wilms@kb.nl