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Abstract

Purpose

An overview of the current use of handwritten text recognition (HTR) on archival manuscript material, as provided by the EU H2020 funded Transkribus platform. It explains HTR, demonstrates Transkribus, gives examples of use cases, highlights the affect HTR may have on scholarship, and evidences this turning point of the advanced use of digitised heritage content. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopts a case study approach, using the development and delivery of the one openly available HTR platform for manuscript material.

Findings

Transkribus has demonstrated that HTR is now a useable technology that can be employed in conjunction with mass digitisation to generate accurate transcripts of archival material. Use cases are demonstrated, and a cooperative model is suggested as a way to ensure sustainability and scaling of the platform. However, funding and resourcing issues are identified.

Research limitations/implications

The paper presents results from projects: further user studies could be undertaken involving interviews, surveys, etc.

Practical implications

Only HTR provided via Transkribus is covered: however, this is the only publicly available platform for HTR on individual collections of historical documents at time of writing and it represents the current state-of-the-art in this field.

Social implications

The increased access to information contained within historical texts has the potential to be transformational for both institutions and individuals.

Originality/value

This is the first published overview of how HTR is used by a wide archival studies community, reporting and showcasing current application of handwriting technology in the cultural heritage sector.

Article
Publication date: 31 January 2023

Mrinalini Luthra, Konstantin Todorov, Charles Jeurgens and Giovanni Colavizza

This paper aims to expand the scope and mitigate the biases of extant archival indexes.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to expand the scope and mitigate the biases of extant archival indexes.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use automatic entity recognition on the archives of the Dutch East India Company to extract mentions of underrepresented people.

Findings

The authors release an annotated corpus and baselines for a shared task and show that the proposed goal is feasible.

Originality/value

Colonial archives are increasingly a focus of attention for historians and the public, broadening access to them is a pressing need for archives.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

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