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1 – 2 of 2Guenter Muehlberger, Louise Seaward, Melissa Terras, Sofia Ares Oliveira, Vicente Bosch, Maximilian Bryan, Sebastian Colutto, Hervé Déjean, Markus Diem, Stefan Fiel, Basilis Gatos, Albert Greinoecker, Tobias Grüning, Guenter Hackl, Vili Haukkovaara, Gerhard Heyer, Lauri Hirvonen, Tobias Hodel, Matti Jokinen, Philip Kahle, Mario Kallio, Frederic Kaplan, Florian Kleber, Roger Labahn, Eva Maria Lang, Sören Laube, Gundram Leifert, Georgios Louloudis, Rory McNicholl, Jean-Luc Meunier, Johannes Michael, Elena Mühlbauer, Nathanael Philipp, Ioannis Pratikakis, Joan Puigcerver Pérez, Hannelore Putz, George Retsinas, Verónica Romero, Robert Sablatnig, Joan Andreu Sánchez, Philip Schofield, Giorgos Sfikas, Christian Sieber, Nikolaos Stamatopoulos, Tobias Strauß, Tamara Terbul, Alejandro Héctor Toselli, Berthold Ulreich, Mauricio Villegas, Enrique Vidal, Johanna Walcher, Max Weidemann, Herbert Wurster and Konstantinos Zagoris
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…
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via Transkribus is covered: however, this is the only publicly available platform for HTR on individual collections of historical documents at time of writing and it represents the current state-of-the-art in this field.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.
Details
Keywords
Kimmo Kettunen, Heikki Keskustalo, Sanna Kumpulainen, Tuula Pääkkönen and Juha Rautiainen
This study aims to identify user perception of different qualities of optical character recognition (OCR) in texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of different…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify user perception of different qualities of optical character recognition (OCR) in texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of different quality OCR on users' subjective perception through an interactive information retrieval task with a collection of one digitized historical Finnish newspaper.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on the simulated work task model used in interactive information retrieval. Thirty-two users made searches to an article collection of Finnish newspaper Uusi Suometar 1869–1918 which consists of ca. 1.45 million autosegmented articles. The article search database had two versions of each article with different quality OCR. Each user performed six pre-formulated and six self-formulated short queries and evaluated subjectively the top 10 results using a graded relevance scale of 0–3. Users were not informed about the OCR quality differences of the otherwise identical articles.
Findings
The main result of the study is that improved OCR quality affects subjective user perception of historical newspaper articles positively: higher relevance scores are given to better-quality texts.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this simulated interactive work task experiment is the first one showing empirically that users' subjective relevance assessments are affected by a change in the quality of an optically read text.
Details