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Transkribus Blog

As part of our ongoing dedication to improving and adapting to the ever-changing needs of our users, we&#8217;re excited to provide a sneak peek into our upcoming pricing system that will bring more flexibility, increased value, and tailored solutions to a vast array of usage scenarios.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-introducing-tailored-subscription-plans">Introducing Tailored Subscription Plans</h2>



Our new pricing system introduces three subscription-based plans: &#8216;Individual&#8217;, &#8216;Scholar&#8217;, and &#8216;Organisation&#8217;. Each of these plans is precisely crafted to meet the distinct requirements of diverse groups of users. We&#8217;ve examined the needs of our users in depth, and designed these plans to ensure that they have something great to offer you, regardless of your specific use case.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-individual-perfect-for-hobby-genealogists-students-including-a-free-option">Individual: Perfect for Hobby Genealogists &amp; Students &#8211; Including a Free Option</h3>



The &#8216;Individual&#8217; plan is tailored for hobby genealogists and students, providing access to the most important transcription tools. This plan includes a free option, offering 100 pages of free processing power monthly: a substantial upgrade from the previous one-time 500 credits for new users. This change ensures a cost-effective gateway into Transkribus&#8217; powerful ecosystem of tools, with the flexibility to scale as needed.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-scholar-tailored-for-individual-researchers">Scholar: Tailored for Individual Researchers</h3>



The &#8216;Scholar&#8217; plan is a perfect fit for individual researchers, no matter if you’re a historian, economist, professional genealogist, climate researcher, or linguist . The nature of research work often requires a more comprehensive set of tools and resources, and our &#8216;Scholar&#8217; plan has been designed keeping these requirements in mind. Whether you&#8217;re working on a detailed analysis of a limited corpus or conducting a large scale academic research project, this plan will offer the resources you need to carry out your work effectively and efficiently with collaboration tools, complex export formats, and Transkribus Sites for publishing.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-organisation-designed-for-research-cultural-and-commercial-organisations">Organisation: Designed for Research, Cultural, and Commercial Organisations</h3>



Lastly, the &#8216;Organisation&#8217; plan has been created to cater to research and cultural institutions such as archives, libraries, and museums, but also government institutions and commercial service providers. These organisations often require more extensive access to Transkribus, handling larger volumes of documents and involving numerous contributors. With the &#8216;Organisation&#8217; plan, organisations can be assured of a reliable, extensive, and scalable service to meet their significant and diverse needs, with the ability to manage your users, custom solutions and pricing tailored to your complex scenarios, and dedicated access to swift support and valuable consulting.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-annual-plans-on-demand-packages-for-larger-projects">Annual Plans &amp; On-Demand Packages for Larger Projects</h2>



If you&#8217;re considering larger projects, foresee the need for extensive usage, or are looking for more flexibility as to when you will be able to use how much of your quota throughout the year, our annual billing option might be the perfect fit for you. Not only does this unlock a whole year&#8217;s processing allowance at once, eliminating the restrictions of a monthly quota, but it also comes with an attractive discount. Moreover, you will always have the option to purchase additional page packages in case you need more processing power in a short period of time.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-change">Why Change?</h2>



Our transition to a new pricing model is more than just a pricing update; it&#8217;s an entirely new approach to providing access to our platform, designed to enhance the experience for all our users. The main goal of this shift is to deliver enhanced value to our active users by closely evaluating our existing structure and refining it to ensure maximum benefit. We&#8217;ve reoriented our pricing strategy to focus more on the functionality and value our platform brings, rather than sheer quantity of usage. This means users are paying for the tools, features, and resources they use, aligning costs more closely with value and relevance. Amidst these changes, we remain committed to maintaining—and further improving— the high-quality services you&#8217;ve come to expect from Transkribus. Furthermore, our new pricing model allows us to offer more customised and sustainable solutions that cater to diverse user needs. This update also forms an important part of our long-term vision for fostering Transkribus&#8217; growth and development, keeping it as accessible and affordable as possible, and ensuring that we will be able to continue to innovate, expand our offerings, and empower&nbsp; our ever-evolving user community.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-next">What’s next</h2>



In the weeks ahead, we will be hosting webinars and creating video tutorials to help you navigate these changes and understand their implications for your usage. We will start introducing the new Organisation plans already in the coming weeks through our sales team. The Individual and Scholar plans will be available starting in August 2023.&nbsp;



We are incredibly grateful for your ongoing support and look forward to enhancing your Transkribus experience with our new pricing system, and supporting you in maximising the benefits of Transkribus. Thank you, and here&#8217;s to many more years of successful collaboration!

Coming Soon: Exciting Changes to Transkribus Subscription Plans!

Transkribus has come a long way since its founding days at the University of Innsbruck and remains closely connected to the education sector to this day.



As an AI-powered text recognition tool, Transkribus is thrilled to be working with the next generation of researchers by making historical documents more accessible. Transkribus helps to make research projects more efficient and offers various functions for learning how to read and transcribe manuscripts. This way, Transkribus helps teachers to engage future researchers and students to transcribe their documents more easily.



In this article, we will first explore the benefits of Transkribus in an educational setting, and then look at how Transkribus can be used in teaching and learning to make working with historical documents easier and more exciting.&nbsp; This article will also look at how students use the platform and how Transkribus can help you as a teacher or student with research projects.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" style="text-align: justify; ">How is Transkribus used in education?</h2>



<div style="text-align: justify;">Transkribus works with universities, libraries and archives to digitise and preserve historical and handwritten documents. Storing these documents in a digital format turns them into searchable files, making them easier for students and teachers to access, read and analyse.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">As an increasing number of universities recognise the benefits of a software like Transkribus, they are offering workshops and seminars on using Transkribus for research and textual analysis.</div>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32683" width="843" height="651" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-3.png 500w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-3-300x232.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-3-16x12.png 16w" sizes="(max-width: 843px) 100vw, 843px"></figure>



MA-History seminar on War Letters. © Andrew Pfannkuche / <a href="https://ninajanz.org/final-research-poster/">Nina Janz</a>



Workshops&nbsp;



<div style="text-align: justify;">One such workshop about <a href="https://dhdhi.hypotheses.org/5985#_ftn2" style="font-size: 0.875rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px;">Transkribus in the Classroom</a> was organised by the University of Freiburg in collaboration with the University of Basel in 2019. The aim of their workshop was to show students at the Bachelor, Master and PHD levels how to explore the digital side of history without having any programming skills or expensive software. Using the Transkribus <a href="https://readcoop.eu/scantent" style="font-size: 0.875rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px;">Scantent</a> and Scan App, they worked on manuscripts written in German Kurrent from around 1800 and a Gothic bookhand from the late 15th century, with positive feedback from students and teachers alike.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nina Janz from the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg organised a student project on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1XCYjUfI0k" style="font-size: 0.875rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px;">war letters from World War II</a>. During the practical sessions in spring 2022, the students used the Transkribus web platform to digitise and transcribe the letters written in German and French. Through this project, Nina Janz was able to teach them about digital tools and in addition, how to develop a critical approach to sources.&nbsp; With the transcribed material available to students, they can develop and improve their research skills.</div>



Winter and Summer School&nbsp;



Also in 2022, on the initiative of Jan Odstrčilík of the Institute of Medieval Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a group of researchers from universities across Europe and the USA organised the Academy’s first <a href="https://readcoop.eu/how-to-organise-a-successful-transkribus-workshop-jan-odstrcilik/">HTR Winter School</a>. Aimed at postgraduate students, it was open to anyone interested in handwritten text recognition of medieval manuscripts. The goal of the HTR Winter School was to show participants in an interactive way how to digitise and analyse manuscripts using Transkribus. The course itself was held in a hybrid format, with both virtual sessions and a face-to-face workshop. The outcome of the workshop? Their own public text recognition model for <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/old-czech-handwriting-with-spaces/">Old Czech Handwriting with spaces</a> and <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/old-czech-handwriting-without-spaces/">Old Czech Handwriting without spaces</a>.



This July, the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, in cooperation with the Research Centre for Hanseatic and Baltic History (FGHO), is organising a summer school on <a href="https://fgho.eu/en/sommerschule-2023-digital-history">Digital History</a>. One of the focal points of the workshop will be the use of Transkribus text recognition software for historical texts. Since hands-on experience is an important part of learning, the summer school will teach participants to work with Transkribus on concrete material in order to understand how to work with digital tools in historical research.



Jan Odstrčilík Transkribus Tip



Answering questions and explaining the different editing or training options can be very time-consuming. Jan Odstrčilík recommends allowing plenty of time for the practice part of the workshop where students and other workshop participants can try out the different features of Transkribus.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" style="text-align: justify;">Teaching the first Transkribus Seminar</h2>



Similarly to Jan Odstrčilík, Robert Klugseder, a musicologist and long-time Transkribus user and workshop expert, realised that the two or three workshop sessions per semester were simply not enough to cover the high demand and many questions from his students. For this reason, he has set up the first seminar to teach students how to use Transkribus at the University of Vienna this summer semester of 2023.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="682" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-1024x682.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32687" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-1024x682.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-300x200.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-768x512.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-1536x1023.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7-600x400.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-7.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px"></figure>



Transkribus User Conference&nbsp; 



Engaging Students with Transkribus



The students attending his course all come from different disciplinary backgrounds and are often inexperienced in reading old manuscripts and their interest in using Transkribus to analyse printed or handwritten text is therefore very high. When teaching about Transkribus, it is important to Klugseder that the students have what he calls an “aha” moment. This light bulb moment, when students read text that previously seemed illegible to them, can be very captivating. And when you show students how illegible text is transformed into legible text by using the text recognition models, that’s what motivates them to work with historical documents.



Transkribus as a Research and Study Tool



In the seminar, Klugseder aims to show students how to use and train the Transkribus text recognition models as useful tools in their research and studies. One time, when a text recognition model was trained to automatically expand Latin abbreviations, Klugseder says the students felt as if Transkribus was almost understanding the abbreviations and grammar itself.&nbsp; Naturally, the platform is not able to understand language in the same way as humans – but this shows how well a well-trained model can work!



What is particularly great, explains Robert Klugseder, is not only the text training but also the layout training possibilities. Working with documents that have different layouts instead of just continuous text can be a challenge for text recognition models alone. He tells us that using Transkribus’ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/docu/p2pala/">P2PaLA</a> layout training can even be fun to work on with students, and with enough training material, the results can become quite good.



Talking to Robert Klugseder, he acknowledges the concerns about AI-powered text recognition platforms but is a firm believer in the benefits of Transkribus. Contrary to fears, Transkribus does not replace the work of human researchers, it enhances it. The key, he says, is not to be afraid of artificial intelligence when used properly, but to embrace it and acknowledge it, or risk being left behind. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="527" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-1024x527.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32685" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-1024x527.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-300x155.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-768x396.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-1536x791.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-18x9.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5-600x309.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-5.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px"></figure>



New Zealand Alpine Journal No. 12 (1922) , via <a href="https://www.nzaj-archive.nz/#/documents/20440/pages/3?t=">New Zealand Alpine Club</a>



 Robert Klugseder’s Trankribus Tip:



<div style="text-align: justify;">When showing Transkribus to beginners, it is best not to show complex handwriting in the first step, but to use printed material! The automatic transcription of handwriting like Kurrent looks great, but with printed material that is easier to read, the hurdle to start transcribing historical documents becomes easier to overcome.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">At Transkribus, we have recognised the educational potential of our platform to not only transcribe but also teach transcription and have therefore developed <a href="https://readcoop.eu/de/try-out-transkribus-learn/" style="font-size: 0.875rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px;">Transkribus Learn</a>.On the Transkribus Learn platform, teachers can engage students and people interested in historical documents to learn how to read and transcribe handwriting or improve their skills, one exercise at a time</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transkribus-for-students" style="text-align: justify;">Transkribus for students&nbsp;</h2>



From a student’s perspective, workshops and lectures like Robert Klugseder’s are a great way to learn how to approach working with historical documents. For research projects, Transkribus provides help in achieving research goals quickly and accurately.



Learning to transcribe with Transkribus



As mentioned above, students from different disciplines are confronted with historical documents, so reading old handwriting such as Kurrent is often a challenge. Using Transkribus can be useful for transcribing material, and even for learning how to read and transcribe yourself.



In several cases, Robert Klugseder has seen students learning to read Kurrent quite quickly with the help of Transkribus. By closely examining the handwriting and comparing it to the correct transcription, students gain a better understanding of how different letters are written. This in turn improves their ability to recognise and decipher similar handwriting on their own. Klugseder sees this as an educational opportunity for students that should not be underestimated.



Student Research with Transkribus



Transkribus is also a valuable tool for students who are more advanced in their studies and research and often have to work with large amounts of material. Since it is not always possible to do this alone, options such as crowd-sourcing can be a good option. However, this costs time and money and is therefore not the best option for graduate students or students without academic funding. In such cases, Transkribus can fill the gap and provide a more attainable and efficient solution.



Precisely for this reason, Jessica Cook used Transkribus for her PhD project on <a href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/lovelace-cook/">Ada Lovelace</a>. Transkribus allowed her to process and analyse a large number of manuscripts and pages. By training a model to suit the requirements, the automatic text recognition results took the project a big step forward.&nbsp; Especially helpful for Jessica Cook was the search option of Transkribus, where you can look for keywords within the digitised and transcribed documents on the platform.&nbsp;



“By training AI models to perform much of the actual transcription work, I can use the keyword search feature to find material specific to my immediate dissertation research goals, instead of relying on guesswork for where relevant material might be located.”



Jessica Cook’s Transkribus Tip&nbsp;Transkribus has a wide range of resources, such as the <a href="https://help.transkribus.com/">Help Center</a> to help users understand the platform and make the most of its many features. Jessica Cook strongly recommends that newcomers to Transkribus use these resources as a starting point. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" width="529" height="718" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32684" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-4.png 529w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-4-221x300.png 221w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image-4-9x12.png 9w" sizes="(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px"></figure>



Library of the University of Vienna. © Griffindor / <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uni_Wien_Bibliothek,_Vienna_2.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a> / public domain 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" style="text-align: justify;">Supporting future researchers</h2>



Transkribus has become a valuable tool in education, providing greater access to historical documents and expanding research opportunities. By digitising and preserving manuscripts, Transkribus has made knowledge more accessible and enabled more people to explore these valuable resources. Collaborations, workshops, seminars and similar initiatives can further empower both educators and learners.&nbsp;



We believe that the future of research is in the hands of teachers and students, which is why we want to support and empower both educators and learners. Through the Transkribus Scholarship Programme, we provide free credits for specific research projects to further encourage research in historical documents, so far Transkribus has awarded scholarships in over 50 countries. Join Jessica Cook and other research projects and apply for the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/scholarship/">Transkribus Scholarship Programme</a> on our website. 



Thumbnail Image:&nbsp;Jacob the Palmer. ©&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Nottingham_II">William of Nottingham</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MS_Laud_Misc_165_fol_211.png">Wikimedia Commons</a>&nbsp;/ public domain

Transkribus in Education

Transkribus Desk is where the work happens.&nbsp;



We are thrilled to offer you a sneak peek into the future of Transkribus with the availability of the Transkribus Next Gen Desk on <a href="http://beta.transkribus.eu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">beta.transkribus.eu</a>. It is now live for you to give it a try. This is the first step towards the new generation of Transkribus. The aim is to simplify and enhance your work at the same time. Here is what you can expect:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-simplified-and-intuitive-experience">A Simplified and Intuitive Experience</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32661" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-300x169.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-768x432.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified-600x338.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/simplified.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Focusing more on simplicity, we have revamped the UI in Next Gen to make it more intuitive and familiar. The primary navigation is now at the top, containing all necessary features and functions in one place. Collections and document cards have all been redesigned for easy identification and use.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-enhanced-customisability">Enhanced Customisability</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Transkribus-5-June-2023.mp4"></video></figure>



In Transkribus Next Gen, you are in the driver&#8217;s seat. We are giving you more control over the software, allowing you to tailor it to your specific needs. Choose between card and table views, adjust the settings, decide the information you want to see, and more. This customisation is designed to help you work more effectively and comfortably.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-improved-search-and-filter-functions">Improved Search and Filter Functions</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32662" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-300x169.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-768x432.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search-600x338.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/improved-search.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Finding what you need is easier and faster than ever with our upgraded search and filter functions, inspired by leading platforms like Amazon. Set different facets, filters, and refine your search to save time and effort.



We are excited for you to explore the first impression of Transkribus Next Gen and eagerly look forward to your feedback.







<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Coming soon: Models, Sites &amp; Connect</h3>



Transkribus Models is where the magic happens.



Transkribus Sites is where the show happens.



Transkribus Connect is where the exchange happens.

Try out the Transkribus Next Gen Desk on our Beta

Transkribus might be known for its ability to transcribe and enrich handwritten documents, but did you know you can also use Transkribus as OCR software too? OCR stands for optical character recognition and it is a technology used to transcribe the text in images, just like Transkribus does. However, the difference is that OCR systems are usually only capable of transcribing printed texts, and not handwritten texts such as historical documents.



The advantage of handwritten text recognition (HTR) systems like Transkribus is that they are capable of transcribing both handwritten texts and printed texts. In fact, there have been several Transkribus projects which have involved the large-scale digitisation and transcription of books and other printed texts. So if you also looking to digitise a collection of printed books, here is everything you need to know about using Transkribus as an OCR service.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-ocr">What is OCR?</h2>



As mentioned in the introduction, there is one core similarity between optical character recognition (OCR) and handwritten text recognition (HTR) platforms: they both convert an image of a document to text. You can upload a scanned page from a book to the platform and it will turn the printed words into a digital text file.



The difference between the two systems is the technology behind the text converter. As the name would suggest, OCR is based on character recognition. Traditional optical character recognition software is basically like a giant database of all the possible characters in all the possible fonts. The OCR engine detects the characters in the image and then, using a technology called pattern recognition, it runs the extracted characters through the database, checking them against each stored character to see how similar it is. Once it finds a match, this character is inserted into the transcription.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="535" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text-1024x535.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32595" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text-1024x535.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text-300x157.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text-768x401.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text-18x9.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text-600x313.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ocr-text.png 1277w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



New Zealand Alpine Journal No. 12 (1922) , via <a href="https://www.nzaj-archive.nz/#/documents/20440/pages/3?t=" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New Zealand Alpine Club</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-would-you-use-htr-for-printed-texts">Why would you use HTR for printed texts?</h2>



OCR technology is fine for printed text, where there is a finite number of possible fonts and characters. However, handwritten text has an infinite number of possibilities. No two people write in exactly the same way, and even the same person might write differently in different situations — for example, on a form as opposed to a shopping list. This makes it challenging for OCR algorithms, as they are constantly presented with information very different to anything they&#8217;ve seen before. Even OCR systems with intelligent character recognition or more advanced optical word recognition often struggle with handwritten texts.



This is where handwritten text recognition, or HTR, comes in. HTR technology, such as Transkribus, is a more advanced form of OCR that uses machine learning to learn how to read different types of handwriting and go on to make educated guesses about handwriting it has never seen before. But although you don&#8217;t need HTR to process printed texts, it has several benefits over OCR. For example, it is a more sophisticated and accurate technology, which uses several different strategies to decipher the text in images, as opposed to just comparing it to pre-set templates.



But the biggest advantage of Transkribus over regular OCR systems is that it can be tailored to your specific text through the use of AI models. These models have been specially trained to read certain types of printed texts — for example, German books printed in Fraktur — and you can choose to perform your text recognition with one of over a hundred models. Because the system doesn&#8217;t take a one-size-fits-all approach, you can customise the platform according to the kind of printed texts you are working with, resulting in more accurate transcriptions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-perform-ocr-with-transkribus">How to perform OCR with Transkribus</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-1-scanning-the-book">Step 1: Scanning the book</h3>



The first step in the OCR process is to scan in all the pages you want to transcribe or extract text from. There are several ways to do this, from using a high-end scanner to simply taking an image with your smartphone.



If you are using the latter method, you could consider using the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/scantent/">ScanTent</a>. This innovative product provides the optimal lighting environment for making high-quality images of books and documents. You simply place the material you want to scan in the tent, attach your smartphone to the mount on the top and take an image in the same way as normal.



In addition, you can use the DocScan app. While the app can be used with any sort of document, it is particularly useful for books as it automatically registers when you turn a page and takes a new image after every turn. This enables you to scan entire books quickly, without having to constantly press buttons on your phone&#8217;s touchscreen.



The<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bnf.fr/fr"> Bibliothèque Nationale de France</a> in Paris now offers ScanTents to all their visitors, so that they can easily make images of materials in the library. You can find out more about that in <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/scantents-at-the-bnf/">this blog post</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="703" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/scantent_smartphone-1024x703.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-6710" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/scantent_smartphone-1024x703.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/scantent_smartphone-600x412.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/scantent_smartphone-300x206.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/scantent_smartphone-768x527.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/scantent_smartphone.jpg 1135w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Scantent © Transkribus



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-2-uploading-scanned-documents">Step 2: Uploading scanned documents</h3>



Once you have your scans, you need to upload them to Transkribus. You first need to <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/first-steps-in-transkribus">set up an account</a> and log in. Then you need to <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/creating-a-collection">create a collection</a> to store your scans in. If you are conducting a larger project with many different books, then it makes sense to create a separate collection for each book.



You can upload scans in JPEG, PNG, or PDF format to Transkribus. If you have used the DocScan app (see above), then you can automatically upload your scans to Transkribus, without having to download them first.



If you are working with private or sensitive information, you will be pleased to hear that all documents uploaded to Transkribus are private by default. They are stored on the servers of READ-COOP SCE (i.e. the company that develops and maintains the software) in a GDPR-compliant manner. The servers are all located in Innsbruck, Austria, and the data may be processed according to the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/terms-and-conditions/?__hstc=110940826.bba4ee16dd4715303222ec5e3f2480f5.1678888778949.1683540101992.1683619433858.24&amp;__hssc=110940826.4.1683619433858&amp;__hsfp=2178483134">terms &amp; conditions</a> on the READ-COOP SCE website.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-3-choosing-a-public-model">Step 3: Choosing a public model</h3>



Before you can start the text recognition process with Transkribus, you have to choose an AI model. This model is like a guidebook, telling the software how to transcribe the individual characters in each document. Therefore, the model you choose will affect how Transkribus transcribes the text in your books.



Luckily, because printed texts are relatively easy for HTR platforms to transcribe, there are many very efficient public models available in several different languages. You can see all the public models<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/"> on our website</a> and can filter according to language and text type (handwritten, typewritten or printed). This should bring up all the relevant models for performing OCR on your books.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-4-running-the-text-recognition">Step 4: Running the text recognition</h3>



The final step is to perform the text recognition itself. Open the document or collection on Transkribus and select &#8220;Text recognition&#8221; from the left-hand toolbar. Then select the right model for your documents and click &#8220;Start&#8221; to begin the text recognition.



The text recognition may take some time, depending on the size and type of the job. However, you can view the status at any time by selecting &#8220;Jobs&#8221; from the left-hand toolbar. You can find full instructions for the text recognition <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/automatically-transcribing-your-documents">here</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="514" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-1024x514.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32594" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-1024x514.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-300x151.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-768x385.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-1536x771.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-2048x1028.png 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-18x9.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/hist-roman-600x301.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



German Historical Novals (1789-1848), via <a href="https://transkribus.eu/r/historischer_roman/#/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read &amp; Search</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-can-i-publish-my-transcribed-books-online">How can I publish my transcribed books online?</h2>



One of the main motivations for digitising and transcribing printed books is to make them readily available online for everyone to use.



There are various ways you can publish your digitised books online. Often, large organisations such as universities and libraries have their own platforms for publishing digitised material. However, if you do not have access to such a system, it is possible to publish your transcribed books via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/readsearch/">read&amp;search</a>.



read&amp;search is an easy-to use platform which allows you to publish documents directly from Transkribus. You can simply choose which collections you wish to publish and our team will set up a fully searchable database of those collections. This allows users to quickly search for the information they specifically need, without having to search through the collection. Several printed book collections have been published on read&amp;search, including the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://transkribus.eu/r/noscemus/#/">NOSCEMUS collection</a> of scientific texts and this collection of <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://transkribus.eu/r/historischer_roman/#/">historical novels in German</a>.



If you are interested in setting up a read&amp;search for your collection, then you can contact our team<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/readsearch/request-a-quote/"> here</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-try-transkribus-for-yourself">Try Transkribus for yourself:</h2>




<div id="t-ai-app" data-embed="1" data-lang="en">
 <script src="https://transkribus.ai/t-ai-inline.js"></script>
</div>

Using Transkribus for OCR with printed books

If you&#8217;re new to Transkribus, or machine learning in general, then you are also probably new to the term &#8220;Ground Truth&#8221;. In short, Ground Truth is the accurate and verified data which is used to train machine learning models, such as those used for automatic transcriptions in Transkribus. And this data is pretty important for the success of your model, as machine learning is just a tool that statistically replicates the data you supply. Therefore, the better your Ground Truth data, the better your model will be.



In this post, we&#8217;re going to take a further look at what Ground Truth is, why it is so important for handwritten text recognition software, and how you can best prepare Ground Truth data on Transkribus.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-basic-ground-truth-definition">A basic Ground Truth definition</h2>



Used in statistics and machine learning, Ground Truth is data that we assume to be true. For example, you have two images. One image depicts a dog, and the other a cat. We know this to be true because we, as humans, have the ability to recognise different animals. If you ask a thousand people which picture contains the dog, they would overwhelmingly point to the same picture.



But for a computer, this task is a lot harder. A computer does not automatically know which animal is which, it has to be taught how to do this. And this is where Ground Truth comes in. If you wanted to train a computer to recognise which photos contain dogs and which cats, you would first have to provide it with a large dataset of images, each labelled as either &#8220;photo with dog&#8221; or &#8220;photo with cat&#8221;. From these Ground Truth labels, the computer can learn what images with dogs look like and what images with cats look like and create a model containing this information.



Once that model is sufficiently trained with enough data, it can be presented with a brand new image and should be able to say whether that image contains a cat or a dog, just like a human would. This is why it is called &#8220;artificial intelligence&#8221;: it is training computers to do intelligent tasks that humans do naturally. And Ground Truth is the basis for this whole process.



<img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Cat_August_2010-4.jpg/800px-Cat_August_2010-4.jpg?20100905152645">Male tabby cat. <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alvesgaspar">Alvesgaspar. </a>Public domain, via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cat_August_2010-4.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>



<img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Canis_lupus_familiaris.001_-_Monfero.jpg/800px-Canis_lupus_familiaris.001_-_Monfero.jpg?20220822213437">Canis lupus familiaris (perro) en Monfero. <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Drow_male">Fernando Losada Rodríguez. </a>Public domain, via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canis_lupus_familiaris.001_-_Monfero.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>



Distinguishing between cats and dogs is easy for a human, but almost impossible for an untrained computer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-ground-truth-just-used-for-training-models">Is Ground Truth just used for training models?</h2>



No, it&#8217;s also used for testing models. Let&#8217;s say you have already created your model for distinguishing between photos of cats and dogs. Now, you want to test how well that model actually works. You can do this by presenting the model with Ground Truth datasets for which you have a &#8220;correct answer&#8221;, and see if the model can come up with that same answer.



With the cat/dog model, that means you would show the model a series of images which have already been labelled as either &#8220;photo with dog&#8221; or &#8220;photo with cat&#8221; and count how often the model correctly assigns the correct label to a photo. This way, you can see how well your model performs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-is-ground-truth-data-used-in-text-recognition-models">How is Ground Truth data used in text recognition models?</h2>



What if you didn&#8217;t want a model that could distinguish between cats and dogs in photos, but that could read and transcribe historical documents? These kinds of models are the core technology behind all handwritten text recognition platforms, and they are trained with Ground Truth in exactly the same way. In this case, the Ground Truth data isn&#8217;t images of cats and dogs but images of texts with accurate transcriptions. Using machine learning, the computer learns from the data which characters in the image represent which characters in the transcription. Then, just like before, it then takes this information and uses it to create a model.



Some text recognition platforms only allow you to use models that have been trained by the creators of the platform. What is particularly unique about Transkribus is that it allows users to create their own models and train them to read a particular type of document. Because these custom models are trained on very specific Ground Truth data, they tend to be more accurate at transcribing documents similar to those in the Ground Truth dataset. This is ideal if you have very specific documents, such as letters by a small group of people, a handwritten diary, or notarial documents from a certain time period.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="115" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process-1024x115.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32514" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process-1024x115.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process-300x34.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process-768x86.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process-18x2.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process-600x67.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/process.png 1335w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Ground Truth is known as &#8220;Training data&#8221; within Transkribus. © Transkribus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-i-prepare-ground-truth-for-a-transkribus-model">How do I prepare Ground Truth for a Transkribus model?</h2>



As you might have guessed already, training your own custom model requires creating Ground Truth data to train it on. In most cases, you will need at least 10,000 words of transcribed handwritten text or 5,000 words of transcribed printed text to train your first model. However, this varies depending on the type of material and model.



There are three main ways of finding suitable Ground Truth data for models in Transkribus:



<ol>
<li>You can manually transcribe documents. This is done by uploading images of the documents to Transkribus and then manually typing out the transcription in the text editor. You can find out more about <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/transcribing-manually">manual transcription</a> in our Help Center.</li>



<li>You can find pre-transcribed examples of texts. For example, if a colleague has already been using Transkribus to transcribe documents similar to the ones you are working on, they can share these directly with your Transkribus collection and you can then save them as Ground Truth.</li>



<li>You can take a public model as a base. Transcribe all your documents with the most suitable <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/">public model</a> and then correct those transcriptions to make them more accurate and re-save them as Ground Truth. This will tailor the model to your specific documents, and save a lot of time in the process.</li>
</ol>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="433" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb-1024x433.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32515" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb-1024x433.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb-300x127.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb-768x325.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb-18x8.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb-600x254.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/modelstb.png 1141w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Using a public model as a base for your custom model can save a lot of time and effort. © Transkribus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-important-to-remember-when-preparing-ground-truth">What is important to remember when preparing Ground Truth?</h2>



The success of your model depends on the quality of your Ground Truth data. And when it comes to quality, the most important aspects are accuracy and consistency.



Firstly, your transcriptions should be as accurate as possible. In machine learning, the model automatically assumes that the Ground Truth data it has been given is true. That means that if there are inaccuracies in your Ground Truth, then the model will think that these inaccuracies are correct, and this will affect the accuracy of any documents the model then goes on to transcribe.



Secondly, your transcription should be consistent. There are many different ways to transcribe linguistic features such as diacritics, ligatures, or S-characters. The way you choose to transcribe these features in your Ground Truth dictates the way that your model will go on to transcribe them. Therefore, it makes sense to consistently transcribe your Ground Truth documents in exactly the way you want the rest of your documents to be transcribed so that the model can learn your system and apply it to later documents.



You can find out more about linguistic features to pay particular attention to <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/data-preparation">on this page</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-can-i-find-out-more-about-preparing-ground-truth-and-training-models-in-transkribus">Where can I find out more about preparing Ground Truth and training models in Transkribus?</h2>



Preparing Ground Truth and models in Transkribus is an extensive topic, and it is worth doing some research before embarking on your first model. Here are some resources where you can find out more about training text recognition models with Ground Truth data:



<ul>
<li>Our <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/">Help Center</a> is a mine of information on all aspects of Transkribus. You can check out the section about training text recognition models <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/training-text-recognition-models">here</a>.</li>



<li>The <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/questions/">FAQs</a> on our website provide answers to the most commonly asked questions about models and training data.</li>



<li>We have also prepared the following video as a user-friendly guide to training models in Transkribus:</li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe title="Training a custom AI model with Transkribus" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M7LdrlKoZzk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>

What is Ground Truth?

If you scroll through the list of Transkribus’ public AI models, you might be forgiven for thinking the platform can only be used for European languages in Latin scripts, such as German, English, or Dutch. But thankfully for researchers working with more “unusual” languages, this is not the case. Transkribus has a wide variety of public models for many different scripts and languages, all of which can be used to automatically transcribe printed or handwritten texts in those languages.



In this post, we are going to take a look at four public AI models for the non-Latin scripts of Ethiopic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Balinese and Ottoman Turkish, and see how they can make your work with documents in those scripts more efficient.







<figure class="wp-block-image size-full" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" width="775" height="599" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_d._circa_1595_Shehr-i_Hafiz_signed_Taher_Umar_Ottoman_Turkey_dated_1821-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32787" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_d._circa_1595_Shehr-i_Hafiz_signed_Taher_Umar_Ottoman_Turkey_dated_1821-2.jpg 775w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_d._circa_1595_Shehr-i_Hafiz_signed_Taher_Umar_Ottoman_Turkey_dated_1821-2-300x232.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_d._circa_1595_Shehr-i_Hafiz_signed_Taher_Umar_Ottoman_Turkey_dated_1821-2-768x594.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_d._circa_1595_Shehr-i_Hafiz_signed_Taher_Umar_Ottoman_Turkey_dated_1821-2-16x12.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_d._circa_1595_Shehr-i_Hafiz_signed_Taher_Umar_Ottoman_Turkey_dated_1821-2-600x464.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px" style="width: 720.299px; height: 556.719px;"></figure>



&nbsp;Ahmet Sudi Bosnawi (d. circa 1595), Shehr-i Hafiz, signed Taher ‘Umar, Ottoman Turkey, dated 1821-2.&nbsp; Public Domain, via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_(d._circa_1595),_Shehr-i_Hafiz,_signed_Taher_%27Umar,_Ottoman_Turkey,_dated_1821-2.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ahmet_Sudi_Bosnawi_(d._circa_1595),_Shehr-i_Hafiz,_signed_Taher_%27Umar,_Ottoman_Turkey,_dated_1821-2.jpg"> </a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" style="text-align: justify;">Ottoman Turkish Print</h2>



As the official language of the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE), Ottoman Turkish was primarily a literary language, written in Arabic script and heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian. With the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1928 and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, a language reform followed, where the public use of Ottoman Turkish was replaced by what is now called ‘modern Turkish’. As part of this reform, loanwords of Persian and Arabic origin were replaced with their Turkish equivalents, and the Ottoman Turkish script was changed to a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language. Since Ottoman Turkish was an official script in the Ottoman Empire for multiple centuries, even though it could be considered a ‘dead’ script today, it is valuable to have legible and available sources to help us understand the past.



This model for Ottoman Turkish was created by the Digital Ottoman Corpora team, led by Süphan Kırmızıaltın, who are working on transcribing Ottoman Turkish printed texts into modern Turkish to make them more accessible.&nbsp; The materials used to train the model were six Ottoman Turkish periodicals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, covering a wide range of topics, and an Ottoman Turkish dictionary.



→ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/ottoman-turkish-print/">Go to model</a> 



<figure class="wp-block-image" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/King_Theodores_Bible%2C_double_folio%3B_St._John._Wellcome_M0008113.jpg/640px-King_Theodores_Bible%2C_double_folio%3B_St._John._Wellcome_M0008113.jpg" alt="" style="width: 582px; height: 439.228px;"></figure>



King Theodores Bible, double folio: St. John. Wellcome Collection. Public domain, via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King_Theodores_Bible,_double_folio;_St._John._Wellcome_M0008113.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King_Theodores_Bible,_double_folio;_St._John._Wellcome_M0008113.jpg"> </a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ethiopic-classical-ethiopic-scripts-from-ethiopia-and-eritrea" style="text-align: justify;">Ethiopic – Classical Ethiopic scripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea</h2>



Often known as Ge-ez, Classical Ethiopic was one of the most important Semitic languages in the part of Africa which is now Ethiopia and Eritrea. This part of the world had considerable cultural, political, and religious influence in the Late Antique and Medieval periods and so understanding the Ethiopic language is important for understanding primary sources written at the time. While it is no longer a living language, Ethiopic is closely related to the modern-day languages of Tigrinya, Arabic and Hebrew and remains the liturgical language of both the Ethiopian and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches.



This Classical Ethiopic model was developed as part of the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.betamasaheft.uni-hamburg.de/">Beta maṣāḥǝft project</a>, which is hosted by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/ethiostudies.html">Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies</a> at the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.uni-hamburg.de/">University of Hamburg</a>. The project aims to create a multimedia research environment for the study of Classical Ethiopic manuscripts and the training data for this model was also used for the project’s database. The model has a CER of just 3.8%.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/ethiopic-classical-ethiopic-scripts-from-ethiopia-and-eritrea/">Go to model</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/ethiopic-classical-ethiopic-scripts-from-ethiopia-and-eritrea/"> </a>



<figure class="wp-block-image" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Bhagavata_Purana_manuscript%2C_18_century.jpg/640px-Bhagavata_Purana_manuscript%2C_18_century.jpg" alt="" style="width: 736px; height: 566.953px;"></figure>



Bhagavata Purana manuscript, 18 century. Bhaktivedanta Research Centre, Kolkata. Public domain, via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bhagavata_Purana_manuscript,_18_century.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bhagavata_Purana_manuscript,_18_century.jpg"> </a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-devanagari-mixed-m1a" style="text-align: justify;">Devanagari Mixed M1A</h2>



The Devanagari script, sometimes incorrectly known as the “Indian alphabet”, is the writing system used for several Indic Aryan languages including Hindi, Sanskrit, and Marathi. Letters in the Devanagari alphabet have a long horizontal stroke at the top of each one, which are joined together with the strokes of all the other letters in the world. Not only is the Devanagari script used on a day-to-day basis by millions of people around the world, but it is also the script used for most sacred texts in Hinduism, as well as many in Buddhism and Jainism, and so has an important religious significance too.



This model for the Devanagari script has been trained on a range of materials in the languages of Hindi, Sanskrit, Braj Bhasha, and Awadhi. All the materials were published in print by the Naval Kishore Press in Lakhnau, North India, during the late 19th and early 20th century. The model was created by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/Welcome.html">University Library of Heidelberg</a> and has a CER of just 2.2%.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/devanagari-mixed-m1a/">Go to model</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/devanagari-mixed-m1a/"> </a>



<figure class="wp-block-image" style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/4Q41_2.png/640px-4Q41_2.png" alt=""></figure>



“All Souls Deuteronomy” from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. Public domain, via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:4Q41_2.png">Wikimedia Commons</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:4Q41_2.png"> </a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hebrew-script-languages" style="text-align: justify;">Hebrew Script Languages</h2>



A descendant of the Aramaic alphabet, the Hebrew script is the writing system not just for the Semitic language of Hebrew, but also for several other languages including Yiddish and Ladino. It is also the script used for most sacred Jewish texts, as well as many other cultural works, making it one of the most studied non-Latin scripts. Interestingly, the Hebrew alphabet originally contained only consonants and speakers had to fill in the vowels themselves when reading texts out loud. However, over the years, scholars and scribes started to mark vowels using a series of points known as niqqud.



This model for Hebrew script languages was created by the Digitizing Jewish Studies project, which was set up by Dr. Sinai Rusinek, at <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.haifa.ac.il/?lang=en">Haifa Universit</a> and supported by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rothschildfoundation.eu/">Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe</a>. The model was trained with texts in several languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish, and Judeo-Arabic, making it suitable for a wide variety of documents in the Hebrew script.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/hebrew-script-languages/">Go to model</a>



<img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Geschrift_op_lontarblad_TMnr_1534-8a.jpg?20131115004555" style="width: 793px; height: 459.925px;"> Writing on a palm-leaf manuscript. Tropenmuseum Collection. Public domain, via <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Geschrift_op_lontarblad_TMnr_1534-8a.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Geschrift_op_lontarblad_TMnr_1534-8a.jpg"> </a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-balinese-palm-leaf-manuscripts-16th-century" style="text-align: justify;">Balinese Palm-Leaf Manuscripts 16th Century</h2>



The Balinese script is a traditional writing system from the island of Bali, Indonesia, which was used for texts in the Balinese language as well as in Old Javanese and Sanskrit. The alphabet consists of 47 letters — not all of which are used when writing Balinese — and uses diacritics to indicate the pronunciation of certain syllables. Nowadays, the Balinese language is usually written in the Latin script, and increasingly fewer people are familiar with the Balinese script. However, it still has a strong cultural significance and features in many of the island’s traditions.



One of those traditions is the creation of palm-leaf manuscripts, or lontar. These have been used for centuries as a way of preserving texts, from religious scriptures to works of literature. Developed by researchers at the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nitt.edu/">NIT Trichy</a> and the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.iiit.ac.in/">IIIT Hyderabad</a> in India, this model was based on a range of palm-leaf manuscripts in the Balinese scripts. All training material dates from the 16th century, making it ideal for transcribing manuscripts from this period.



If you work with palm-leaf manuscripts, you may also be interested in our current collaboration with the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia Foundation</a>, which aims to digitise and transcribe over 20,000 handwritten Indonesian palm-leaf manuscripts. You can find out more about that <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/21/launching-wikisource-loves-manuscripts-for-the-digital-preservation-of-over-20000-indonesian-manuscripts/">on their website</a>.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/balinese-palm-leaf-manuscripts-16th-century/">Go to model</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/balinese-palm-leaf-manuscripts-16th-century/"> </a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-i-use-a-public-ai-model-with-transkribus" style="text-align: justify;">How do I use a public AI model with Transkribus?</h2>



Transkribus’ transcriptions are based on AI models. Each model has been trained to read a specific type of handwritten or printed text in a certain language, and often a certain time period or genre too.



If you want to transcribe a document with Transkribus, you first need to upload a scan of the document and then you choose a model. There are currently 94 public models available, which are all completely free to use. Transkribus will take the information stored in that model and apply it to your document, creating an instant transcription.



But what if there isn’t a model that is suitable for the text in your documents? Then you also have the chance to train your own. To do this, you need a series of pre-transcribed documents, collectively known as “Ground Truth”. The more Ground Truth you use to train your model, the more information it will contain and the more accurate it will be when transcribing new documents. To save time, many people use a public model as the base for their custom model and then fine-tune it with further Ground Truth. 



For more information about models and how to train them, check out our <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/">Help Center</a>. Upload a document and give Transkribus a try.








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Ethiopic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Balinese and Ottoman Turkish: 5 public AI models for transcribing non-Latin scripts

Did you know that Transkribus isn’t run by an ordinary company but by a cooperative? READ-COOP was set up in 2019 to ensure the long-term development of Transkribus through cooperation and collaboration with users. Four years later and our cooperative now has over 145 members from 30 different countries, who all have their say in the future of the platform.



Without the hard work and collaboration with our members, Transkribus would not be the success it is today. So in this post, we would like to celebrate our many different types of members and look at why they decided to become part of READ-COOP.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-1024x768.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32315" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-1024x768.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-300x225.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-768x576.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-1536x1152.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-16x12.png 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5-600x450.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-5.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



The University of Innsbruck, where Transkribus started. © University of Innsbruck



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-universities-making-research-easier-for-scholars">Universities: Making research easier for scholars</h2>



Transkribus is frequently used by university scholars to make their research projects more efficient. That’s why many universities and research institutions choose to become members of READ-COOP. Not only do they benefit from being able to buy credits at a reduced rate, but they also influence the future of the platform that so many of their researchers use.&nbsp;



Many of our university members have been involved in the Transkribus project right from the very beginning. These include the <a href="https://www.uni-greifswald.de/">University of Greifswald</a>, the <a href="https://www.fau.eu/fau/welcome-to-fau/">Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg</a>, <a href="https://www.upv.es/en">Valencia Polytechnic University</a>, the <a href="https://www.ed.ac.uk/">University of Edinburgh</a>, the <a href="https://www.tuwien.at/en/">Technical University of Vienna</a>, and the <a href="https://www.uni-rostock.de/">University of Rostock</a>.



Since then, plenty of other universities have decided to help their researchers and become members of READ-COOP. Many of these are in Europe, for example, the <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/">University of Cambridge</a> and the <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/">University of Aberdeen</a> in the United Kingdom; the <a href="https://www.univie.ac.at/en/">University of Vienna</a> in Austria; <a href="https://www.tcd.ie/">Trinity College Dublin</a> in Ireland; the <a href="https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/">University of Antwerp</a>, <a href="https://www.uu.nl/en">Utrecht University</a>, the <a href="https://www.uva.nl/en">University of Amsterdam</a>, and <a href="https://www.ru.nl/en">Radboud University</a> in the Netherlands; the <a href="https://ut.ee/en">University of Tartu</a> in Estonia; the <a href="https://www.helsinki.fi/en">University of Helsinki</a>, the <a href="https://www.ku.dk/english/">University of Copenhagen</a>, and the <a href="https://english.hi.is/university_of_iceland">University of Iceland</a> in the Nordic countries; <a href="https://www.umb.sk/en/">Matej Bel University</a> in Slovakia; and finally the <a href="https://uol.de/">Carl von Ossietzky University</a> in Oldenburg and the <a href="https://www.uni-kiel.de/en/">Christian Albrecht University</a> in Kiel, both Germany.



However, more and more universities outside Europe are joining READ-COOP, such as the <a href="https://www.umd.edu/">University of Maryland</a>, the <a href="https://www.utexas.edu/">University of Texas at Austin</a>, and the <a href="https://www.uqar.ca/">University of Quebec at Rimouski</a>.&nbsp;



View all our university members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32313" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3-300x200.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3-768x512.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3-600x400.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



The State Archives of Zurich has digitised thousands of documents with Transkribus. © Staatsarchiv Zürich







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Archives: Supporting the mass digitisation of documents</h2>



Archives are another type of institution that uses Transkribus on a large scale. In some cases, Transkribus has been used to transcribe millions of pages, making them accessible to the general public like never before. By becoming a member of READ-COOP, archives can help us to develop the platform further to ensure it suits their needs.



There are many national archives that are members of READ-COOP, such as the <a href="https://riksarkivet.se/startpage">Swedish National Archives</a>, the <a href="https://www.arkivverket.no/en">National Archives of Norway</a>, the <a href="https://arch.arch.be/index.php?l=en">State Archives of Belgium</a>, the <a href="https://kansallisarkisto.fi/en/frontpage">National Archives of Finland</a>, the <a href="https://anlux.gouvernement.lu/en/service.html">National Archives of Luxembourg</a>, and the <a href="https://www.ra.ee/en/national-archives/about-us/">National Archives of Estonia</a>. Many city archives have also signed up to become members, including the State Archives in <a href="https://www.zg.ch/behoerden/staatskanzlei/staatsarchiv">Zug</a> and in <a href="https://www.zh.ch/de/direktion-der-justiz-und-des-innern/staatsarchiv.html">Zurich</a>, Switzerland, the municipal archive in <a href="https://www.leuven.be/">Leuven</a>, Belgium, and the <a href="https://www.stockach.de/tourismus-kultur/de/kulturzentrum/stadtarchiv-1">City Archives of Stockach</a>, Germany. The Netherlands has plenty of city archives that are members, such as the archives in <a href="https://noord-hollandsarchief.nl/">Noord-Holland</a>, <a href="https://www.groningerarchieven.nl/">Groningen</a>, <a href="https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/amsterdam-city-archives/">Amsterdam</a> and <a href="https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/english">Utrecht</a>, as well as the municipal archives in <a href="https://archief.schiedam.nl/">Schiedam</a>.&nbsp;



In addition, we have some archival members that don’t fit either of these categories. For example, the <a href="https://www.dasp.at/">Archive of the Diocese of St Pölten</a> in Austria houses church records going back centuries, and the <a href="https://archivo.fundacionbyb.org/">Fundación Bunge y Born</a>, which is the largest private company archive in South America.



View all our archival members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="710" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-1024x710.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32314" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-1024x710.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-300x208.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-768x533.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-1536x1066.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4-600x416.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-4.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



The British Library houses a copy of every book ever published in the UK. © The British Library







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Libraries: Creating digital versions of publications</h2>



Similar to archives, libraries also frequently use Transkribus to digitise vast amounts of books and publications, as well as their collections of rare manuscripts. This enables people to access the library’s resources much more easily, without the need to come to the library in person.



Many different libraries are members of READ-COOP, such as the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/">British Library</a>, the <a href="https://www.zb.uzh.ch/en">Central Library of Zurich</a>, the National Libraries of <a href="https://www.nls.uk/">Scotland</a>, <a href="https://www.nb.no/">Norway</a>, and <a href="https://www.kb.nl/en">the Netherlands</a>, and the <a href="https://www.wienbibliothek.at/english">Vienna City Library</a> and <a href="https://www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/topmenu/info-point/bibliothek">ZAMG Library</a> in Austria. Many university libraries also choose to become members, including the university libraries in <a href="https://ub.unibas.ch/de/">Basel, Switzerland</a>; <a href="https://library.stanford.edu/">Stanford, USA</a>; <a href="https://www.uib.no/en/ub">Bergen, Norway</a>; <a href="http://www.unilib.rs/">Belgrade, Serbia</a>; <a href="https://www.library.universiteitleiden.nl/">Leiden, the Netherlands</a>, and <a href="https://www.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/die_bibliothek/index.de.jsp">Darmstadt, Germany</a>. This is despite the fact that, in most cases, the university itself is not a member.



View all our library members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32316" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6-1024x576.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6-300x169.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6-768x432.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6-18x10.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6-600x338.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-6.png 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



The Natural History Museum in Berlin is just one of many museums using Transkribus to create digital collections. © MFN Berlin







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Museums: Supporting digitisation strategies</h2>



At first, it might not seem that museums would have a large need for transcription software. After all, documents only make up a small proportion of the artefacts in the average museum. However, automatic transcription can help a museum in ways that aren’t always immediately obvious.&nbsp;



One example is index cards or labels. Museum collections often contain vast numbers of artefacts, of which only a small number are on display to the public. The rest are held in large storage rooms, each with a (usually handwritten) label detailing all the important information about the artefact. Digitising these handwritten labels enables the museum to create a digital database of all the artefacts in their collection, making it possible to analyse vast quantities of artefact data. It also opens up many other possibilities, such as creating digital collections that the public can access from home.



Museums that are members of READ-COOP include the <a href="https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en">Rijksmuseum</a> in Amsterdam, the <a href="https://www.hansemuseum.eu/en/">European Hanseatic Museum</a> in Lübeck, and the <a href="https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en">Natural History Museum</a> in Berlin.



View all our museum members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="332" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-1024x332.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32312" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-1024x332.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-300x97.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-768x249.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-1536x498.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-18x6.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2-600x195.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-2.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Picturae are one of several companies that partner with Transkribus to help their customers digitise their collections. © Picturae







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Companies: Bringing Transkribus to their customers</h2>



While the majority of READ-COOP members are state-run institutions such as universities or archives, private companies are also increasingly interested in becoming members. Many of our company members are active in the digitalisation industry, and use Transkribus to help their clients digitise their handwritten documents. Of course, as members, they are able to buy credits at a reduced rate and have a direct line of communication with the cooperative management, which benefits their business goals.



Three such company members are <a href="https://picturae.com/en/">Picturae</a> in the Netherlands, <a href="https://europe.naverlabs.com/">Naver Labs Europe</a> and <a href="https://en.geneanet.org/">Geneanet SA</a> in France, as well as <a href="https://content-conversion.com/">CSS</a>, <a href="https://picturesafe-scansolution.de/">picturesafe management</a>, and <a href="https://www.intranda.com/en/">Intranda</a> in Germany.&nbsp;



View all our company members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="329" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32311" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1-300x96.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1-768x247.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1-18x6.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1-600x193.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Many of our members come together every year for the Transkribus User Conference. © READ-COOP







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Private members: Supporting Transkribus on an individual basis</h2>



But of course, you don’t have to be an organisation to be a member of READ-COOP. Plenty of individuals decide to join the cooperative, enjoy the benefits of membership, and support our mission to unlock the past and make it accessible to everyone.



That could be because they are academic scholars who have used Transkribus professionally and want to support it personally, too. Many private members are also active in the family genealogy field and use Transkribus to unlock family documents and find out more about their ancestors. Some private members are volunteers involved in citizen science projects and want to support Transkribus with more than just their free time.



View all our private members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a> (please note, some private members choose to stay anonymous).&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1024x683.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32310" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-1024x683.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-300x200.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-768x512.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-600x400.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image.png 1124w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Academic societies encourage research collaboration and exchange. © Christina Morillo from Pexels







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cultural and Academic Societies: Enhancing their work through digitisation</h2>



Finally, various cultural and academic societies are members of READ-COOP. These societies often either focus on a particular type of research, or they are umbrella organisations which represent other scholarly institutions. Either way, they use Transkribus to enhance their research work and make it ready for the future.



Cultural and academic societies that are part of READ-COOP include the <a href="https://www.compgen.de/">Society for Computer Genealogy</a>, the <a href="https://www.maxweberstiftung.de/en/home.html">Max Weber Foundation</a>, the <a href="https://www.mpg.de/en">Max Planck Society</a>, and the <a href="https://www.awhamburg.de/">Academy of Sciences in Hamburg</a>, Germany; the <a href="https://www.sls.fi/en">Society of Swedish Literature</a> in Finland; the <a href="http://www.fondazionebanconapoli.it/">Banco di Napoli Foundation</a> in Italy; the <a href="https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/">Austrian Academy of Sciences</a>; the <a href="https://huc.knaw.nl/">KNAW Humanities Cluster</a>, the <a href="https://ivdnt.org/english-pages/#:~:text=The%20Instituut%20voor%20de%20Nederlandse,Dutch%20language%20through%20the%20centuries.">Dutch Language Institute</a>, the <a href="https://www.tresoar.nl/">Tresoar Literary Museum</a>, and the <a href="https://www.niod.nl/en">NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies</a> in the Netherlands; the <a href="https://dkarkiver.dk/">Organisation for Danish Archives</a> in Denmark; and finally <a href="https://memoriahistoriens.com/">Memoria Historiens</a> and the <a href="https://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/en">Canadian Research Knowledge Network</a>, both located in Canada.



View all our society members on the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">Members page</a>.







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Becoming a member</h2>



As is probably obvious from this post, READ-COOP members are a very diverse group of people, ranging from world-renowned universities to hobby genealogists. However, they all have one thing in common: they are all passionate about unlocking history and making it accessible to everyone.



Do you share this passion and want to have your say in the future of Transkribus? Then you might want to consider joining READ-COOP and becoming a co-owner of the cooperative. This will allow you to not only benefit from buying credits at a reduced rate, but also to hear about the latest Transkribus developments in monthly Members Meetings, and have the chance to vote on the future of Transkribus at the annual general assembly.&nbsp; If you want to become a co-owner and help write the next chapter of the Transkribus story, then head over to<a href="https://readcoop.eu/join/"> our website</a> and find out more about becoming a member of READ-COOP.

Meet the members of READ-COOP

You may have heard of the academic disciplines known as the humanities, but what exactly is digital humanities? It’s not easy to define this relatively recent field and finding one definition that all digital humanists agree on is almost impossible. But in general, the term “digital humanities” refers to the use of digital tools and techniques in humanities research. It is an interdisciplinary field that brings together a wide range of researchers, from historians to philosophers to computer scientists. These research groups work together to develop and analyse digital technologies — for example, Transkribus — with the aim of enhancing research into the traditional humanities.



In this post, we are going to look deeper at the field of digital humanities and some of the research approaches that are used. We will then talk about how Transkribus has been used within the digital humanities and showcase some key projects in the field. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-has-technology-affected-digital-humanities" style="text-align: justify; ">How has technology affected digital humanities?</h2>



Technology has had a profound impact on the development and growth of the digital humanities. In fact, digital humanities would not be possible without the use of digital technologies and computational methods.



First, technology has made it possible to create digital archives and databases, which are essential for accessing and analysing large amounts of data or information. These archives can include digitised versions of primary sources such as manuscripts, photographs, and maps, as well as metadata that helps to provide context for these sources. Digitising documents in this way makes them more accessible to researchers and digital humanists, and therefore easier to analyse and study. This is particularly useful for researchers living in far-off destinations, who no longer need to travel to access their source material.



In addition to ease of access, digitising an archive makes it easier to organise and get an overview of archives and information databases. As you can probably imagine, going through rows of shelves is time-consuming, and thumbing through fragile books or manuscripts can damage them. Being able to search for information online makes the research process more efficient.



 <img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/First-ICRC-records_ICRC-Archives_RomanDeckert09062020.jpg" style="font-size: 0.875rem; font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px; width: 952px; height: 625.256px;"> Shelves in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) containing pre-1914 records at the headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="font-size: 0.875rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(33, 37, 41); font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px;">, via Wikimedia Commons”&gt;©RomanDeckert</a> / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>



At the same time, technology has enabled the development of digital tools and software that allow researchers to access and study data. Technologies are used both as research objects and as research methods and analysis in the digital humanities. Consequently, new tools allow scholars not only to obtain information but also to analyse and visualise it in new and innovative ways. Text mining tools, for example, can identify patterns and trends in large collections of text, while data visualisation tools can create interactive graphics that help illustrate complex data sets.



Another great advantage of technology in research, particularly in humanities scholarship, is easier collaboration and knowledge exchange. This is certainly true for digital humanities, with online platforms and social media providing opportunities for researchers to connect with colleagues on projects, share research results, and engage with a wider audience. Moreover, this has created new opportunities for learning and teaching in the humanities. Digital books, online courses and other resources give students and other interested people access to a variety of information and learning opportunities. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-kind-of-methods-are-used-in-digital-humanities" style="text-align: justify;">What kind of methods are used in digital humanities?</h2>



Digital humanities employ a wide range of methods, which vary according to the project’s research questions and objectives. Scholars use computational techniques either to address current research questions or to challenge existing theoretical frameworks, which often leads to new questions being posed and innovative methods being developed. The overall intention is to seamlessly integrate computational technology into the practice of digital humanities research.



<img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Peniarth_Manuscripts_Data_Visualisation_05.jpg" style="width: 731px; height: 672.508px;">Scribes of works in the Peniarth Manuscript Collection and their associated works. ©<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jason.nlw">Jason.nlw </a>/ Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-three-commonly-used-digital-humanities-methods" style="text-align: justify;">Three commonly used digital humanities methods:</h3>



<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Text and data mining is the process of analysing large amounts of data to gain insights and recognise patterns. This method can be applied to a range of cultural resources and materials, including books, newspapers, and social media posts. By using text mining, researchers can identify themes, trends and other patterns that may not be immediately apparent using traditional “close reading” methods. The findings from researching such cultural materials are presented in new ways, often with interactive visuals and stories.</li>



<li style="text-align: justify;">Network analysis and digital mapping show connections and relationships between data. Network analysis allows researchers to visualise and analyse the relationships or interactions between people, objects and other entities. This method is particularly useful for understanding the social and cultural connections of a particular period or group, for example, the distribution of scribes and their associated works as shown in the diagram above. Digital mapping visualises the spatial relationships between data points by using geocoding data to create maps. Both methods are useful for working with complex datasets.</li>



<li style="text-align: justify;">A smaller field of research, animated archives is another method used by digital humanists to represent historical data in a virtually experiential way. It applies user-centred approaches to the construction of digital archives, focusing on multi-modal presentation and interactivity.</li>
</ul>



Although digital spaces are valued for sharing and collaboration, physical spaces are important for students and researchers to come together and work with or on research approaches. One example of this is a digital humanities lab, which provides space and opportunities for students and researchers to explore new methods or tools. These labs offer the chance to do research, tackle new questions, and work on interdisciplinary projects on current issues. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-has-transkribus-been-used-in-digital-humanities" style="text-align: justify;">How has Transkribus been used in digital humanities?</h2>



Digital humanities is a rapidly evolving field that combines traditional humanities disciplines with digital technology. The development of tools like Transkribus, a text recognition and transcription platform, has revolutionised the way researchers approach the study of literary and historical materials. Transkribus has been used in various digital humanities projects and disciplines ranging from literature and arts to history and social sciences. It has proved particularly useful in the study of literary history, where it has allowed the digitisation and analysis of handwritten sources, including diaries, letters, and manuscripts, which were previously difficult to access and study.



One example of Transkribus’s contribution is its role in the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/discovering-a-lost-play-by-lope-de-vega-alvaro-cuellar/">discovery of a previously unknown play</a> by the renowned Spanish writer Lope de Vega. The research team were able to rapidly digitise thousands of handwritten manuscripts, before analysing the language used in the digital versions to see if it matched the profile of any established writers. Previously, this process would have taken decades to complete. With Transkribus and other digital tools, it took just a few years.



Transkribus has also been used to create digital and transcribed collections of archival materials. Major archives in countries such as <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/state-archives-of-zurich/">Switzerland</a> and<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/national-archives-of-the-netherlands/"> the Netherlands</a> have worked with Transkribus to make their archives digital and accessible to all.



There have been several projects in whichTranskribus has helped to transcribe and identify the handwritten letters and diaries of historical figures, providing insight into their personal lives and the culture of their times. However, Transkribus has also been instrumental in exposing the forgery of supposed historical documents, such as <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNspVJCdaQw">the fake Hitler diaries</a>.



The fact that a platform like Transkribus is being used in so many different ways demonstrates the value of technological advances in the digital humanities. The ability to transcribe documents online and analyse large datasets with greater efficiency and accuracy than ever before is made possible using tools like Transkribus’ text recognition models. As a result, this allows for new insights or perspectives on works that were previously understudied or overlooked. Overall, Transkribus has become a valuable tool in digital scholarship for those interested in exploring the intersection of technology and the humanities.

What is Digital Humanities?

Think of an archive and you might think of old, dusty basements full of disorganised boxes of papers. But in the technological age, archives are taking on a new role. No longer are they purely physical collections of papers, manuscripts, or physical media, such as photographs or artwork. Instead, archives are becoming fully searchable digital collections, making it easier for researchers and the general public to access historical records and items from anywhere, at any time.



However, digitising an archive in this way is a challenge. A large national archive can hold millions of pages of text, which all have to be transcribed in order to produce digital versions. Previously, this was done manually — each individual word in the document was typed into a computer program by a human being. As you can imagine, transcribing in this way is a very time-consuming process and it would take literally decades to transcribe the millions of archival materials in a large archive.



That&#8217;s where Transkribus comes in. Transkribus is an AI-powered platform that uses machine learning to learn how to read a specific type of handwriting, no matter which language the text is in or when it was written. Once the platform can sufficiently recognise the handwriting, it can then transcribe thousands of pages at the click of a button.



In this post, we would like to give you an overview of the different kinds of archival materials which can be transcribed using Transkribus. You will learn how to process materials using the platform and there are also examples of archives which have successfully digitised their collections with Transkribus and made them fit for the future.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Archives_du_chapitre_de_Sion_01.jpg/640px-Archives_du_chapitre_de_Sion_01.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



Archives house many different types of written material. © <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tatakdh">Tatakdh</a> / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-archival-materials">What are archival materials?</h2>



There are many different types of archival materials but they all have one thing in common: they are all primary sources. This means they were written at the time a particular historical event took place, usually by someone who was there. Because of this, archival materials are particularly useful for historical research and most items in an archive can be used as scholarly sources. Some of the key types of archival materials include:



Manuscripts: These are any kind of material that is written by hand (&#8220;manu scripti&#8221; is Latin for &#8220;handwritten&#8221;). The oldest manuscripts still surviving today are thousands of years old and extremely fragile. Handling archival material such as old manuscripts is a delicate task and so creating digital versions of them makes it possible for everyone to access the contents without damaging the manuscript.



Archival records: These are documents written by individuals or organisations to keep a written account of events such as births, deaths, meetings, finances, and many others. According to the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/archival-record.html">SAA Glossary</a>, the term &#8220;archival record&#8221; usually denotes unpublished documents, rather than published artefacts such as books.



Letters, diaries, and personal papers: These very important types of material give an insight into the lives of the people who wrote them and the world they were living in at the time. They are particularly useful when studying a single individual or small group.



Organising archival materials is more than just writing a description and putting it on the right shelf. Each item is classified according to several &#8220;elements&#8221;, which are included in the archival description. These include intellectual elements, such as the name, date and type of material; physical occurrence elements such as the number of pages or location; and the media occurrence element, which covers the media type, colour, dimensions, piece count, and reproduction count. These archival materials elements make it easier for someone to find a certain material and immediately understand its context.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="801" height="443" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/scantent.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23119" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/scantent.jpg 801w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/scantent-300x166.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/scantent-768x425.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/scantent-16x9.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/scantent-600x332.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 801px) 100vw, 801px" /></figure>



The ScanTent can be used to create high-quality scans of archival materials. © Transkribus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-step-by-step-guide-to-digitising-archival-materials-with-transkribus">A step-by-step guide to digitising archival materials with Transkribus</h2>



Transkribus is an AI-powered platform which converts handwritten or printed text into digital transcriptions. It is used in many different archives around the world to transcribe materials in just a fraction of the time it would take a human being. This allows whole collections to be quickly digitised and made accessible to everyone.



Below is a short overview of how to transcribe materials with Transkribus. For more details, check out our <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/">Help Center</a>, which contains detailed information on each step of the process.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-1-create-images-of-the-archival-materials">Step 1: Create images of the archival materials</h3>



To use Transkribus, you need high-quality images or scans of the documents you want to transcribe. These should be in JPEG, PNG or PDF format.



You can create images using anything from sophisticated scanning technology to just your regular smartphone. If you are using this second option, we recommend using a device such as the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/scantent/">ScanTent</a>, to ensure optimal lighting and image quality.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-2-sign-up-to-transkribus">Step 2: Sign up to Transkribus</h3>



Before you can do any transcribing in Transkribus, you first need to create an account. Go to <a href="http://app.transkribus.eu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">app.transkribus.eu</a> , click on &#8220;Sign up for free&#8221; and follow the instructions. Find out more about <a href="https://help.transkribus.com/first-steps-in-transkribus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">registration and login</a> in our Help Center.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-3-upload-your-images">Step 3: Upload your images</h3>



Images are stored in “collections” on Transkribus. You can organise collections however you like. For example, a collection could include all the scans from a certain book or physical collection.



Start your collection by clicking “Tools” and then “Create a collection”. Once the collection has been created, select it on your Workdesk and then click “Upload” from the left-hand toolbar. You can then select the documents you wish to upload.



Your images and data will be stored on the servers of READ-COOP SCE, which are all located in Innsbruck, Austria, in a GDPR-compliant manner, and may be processed according to our&nbsp;<a href="https://readcoop.eu/terms-and-conditions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">terms &amp; conditions</a>. If data cannot leave your infrastructure for privacy reasons, check our On-Prem solution (<a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/on-prem/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/on-prem/</a>).



Find out more about&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://help.transkribus.com/creating-a-collection?__hstc=175940285.f7e3f39fd2fcee05fb32b06556209a24.1676363691689.1681200919014.1681204556052.72&amp;__hssc=175940285.1.1681204556052&amp;__hsfp=179051687" rel="noreferrer noopener">creating collections</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://help.transkribus.com/uploading-files-to-transkribus?__hstc=175940285.f7e3f39fd2fcee05fb32b06556209a24.1676363691689.1681200919014.1681204556052.72&amp;__hssc=175940285.1.1681204556052&amp;__hsfp=179051687" rel="noreferrer noopener">uploading documents</a>&nbsp;in our Help Center.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-step-4-create-an-automatic-transcription">Step 4: Create an automatic transcription</h3>



Open your collection and select a particular image. Click &#8220;Start automatic transcription&#8221; to begin the transcription process.



You will then need to select a model. This is a piece of code that contains all the information Transkribus needs to transcribe the text accurately. There are over 100 public models available, covering different languages and time periods. Select the one that is most relevant to your material and then click &#8220;Start&#8221;.



Once the processing is complete, the automatic transcription will appear on the right side of the screen. Find out more about <a href="https://help.transkribus.com/automatically-transcribing-your-documents" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automatically transcribing documents</a> in our Help Center.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="498" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-1024x498.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32210" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-1024x498.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-300x146.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-768x374.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-1536x747.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-18x9.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613-600x292.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-105613.jpg 1916w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Transkribus can create automatic transcriptions of any historical document. © Transkribus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-improve-the-accuracy-and-efficiency-of-your-transcriptions">How to improve the accuracy and efficiency of your transcriptions</h2>



Public models like the ones described above are trained to transcribe a broad range of archival materials with reasonable accuracy. However, if you want to improve the accuracy or efficiency of your transcriptions, here are a couple of tips.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-check-the-quality-of-your-scans">Check the quality of your scans</h3>



The better the quality of your scans, the better the automatic transcriptions will be. Therefore, it makes sense to check that all the text on your scans is clearly legible — as mentioned above, good lighting when taking the images helps a lot here. You should also make sure that there are no marks or other &#8220;noise&#8221; which might affect how Transkribus processes them.



Finally, check that all the scans were uploaded with the correct orientation (portrait or landscape), as this will also have an impact on the layout recognition. Rotate any incorrect scans back to their original orientation and re-upload them to Transkribus.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-improve-layout-recognition">Improve layout recognition</h3>



Before the text can be recognised, Transkribus first needs to know where on the page the text is located. It does this using layout recognition. This analyses which parts of the document contain text and visibly marks each individual line. It is these lines of text which are then recognised by the platform.



However, that also means that if the layout recognition is incorrect, then the text will also be incorrectly transcribed. Therefore, any errors in the layout recognition must be corrected manually to ensure an accurate transcription. If you have a material based on a table — for example, a birth register — then you can also programme this separately into Transkribus, so that the platform recognises the rows and columns correctly.



Find out more about <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/manual-layout-recognition">manual layout recognition</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/tables">tables</a> in our Help Center.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="953" height="599" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-110537.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32211" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-110537.jpg 953w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-110537-300x189.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-110537-768x483.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-110537-18x12.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-03-31-110537-600x377.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 953px) 100vw, 953px" /></figure>



Good layout recognition leads to good text recognition. © Transkribus



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-train-a-custom-model">Train a custom model</h3>



Transkribus doesn&#8217;t just provide public models, it allows you to train custom models, too. These are models that are tailor-made to your individual materials, resulting in more accurate transcriptions.



To train a custom model, you first need to manually transcribe around 5,000-15,000 words, depending on the complexity of the handwriting. Transkribus will then use this transcribed material to learn how to read the handwriting and create a model so that it can recognise similar texts in the future.



Many archives train custom models to recognise a specific type of collection, for example, council records from a particular time period or notarial deeds written by a select group of notaries. This allows the collections to be transcribed much more accurately, with less post-editing required afterwards. Find out more about <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://help.transkribus.com/training-models">training models</a> in our Help Center.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-archives-that-have-successfully-digitised-their-materials-with-transkribus">3 archives that have successfully digitised their materials with Transkribus</h2>



Archives around the world have used Transkribus to transcribe many different types of materials and create digital versions of them. For more information about some of our most successful archival projects, check out the blog articles below.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/NAN.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transcribing-3-million-scans-at-the-national-archives-of-the-netherlands">Transcribing 3 million scans at the National Archives of the Netherlands</h3>



The National Archives of the Netherlands is home to literally millions of pages of material, both printed and handwritten. As part of their digitisation strategy, the archives used Transkribus to transcribe 3 million pages of records and notarial deeds from the 17th-19th centuries. The custom model they trained is also now available to all as a public model. Find out more about the project <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/national-archives-of-the-netherlands/">here</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/lovelace.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-creating-a-digital-scholarly-edition-of-the-lovelace-papers">Creating a digital scholarly edition of the Lovelace papers</h3>



Housed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Lovelace papers are the private letters and memos of 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace. There are around 14,000 pages in all, which researcher Jessica Cook is using to train a custom model tailored to Lovelace&#8217;s individual handwriting, as well as the handwriting of other contributors, such as her husband and mother. Find out more about the project <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/lovelace-cook/">here</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/zuerich.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-the-state-archives-of-zurich-published-50-000-pages-online">How the State Archives of Zurich published 50,000 pages online</h3>



The State Archives of Zurich is a mine of historical information about the Swiss city. However, physically accessing the archive&#8217;s premodern collection was a challenge, prompting the archive to create a digital version which could be easily accessed online. Thanks to an accurate model, the team was able to transcribe and publish 50,000 pages of council minutes in just three years. Find out more about the project <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/state-archives-of-zurich/">here</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-try-transkribus-for-yourself">Try Transkribus for yourself</h2>



Transkribus is an AI-powered platform that transcribes handwritten text at the push of a button.



You can try the full version of Transkribus at <a href="http://app.transkribus.eu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">app.transkribus.eu</a> or try our demo version below.




<div id="t-ai-app" data-embed="1" data-lang="en">
 <script src="https://transkribus.ai/t-ai-inline.js"></script>
</div>

How to digitise archival materials with Transkribus

The majority of Transkribus models are also trained to read just one language — after all, most historical documents are written in one language. But what if your document contains three (or even more) languages? Can you train a model to read all three at the same time?



The answer is yes, as Jeff Rusten and his team at Cornell University recently proved. Rusten’s research group have been working on a dictionary of all the words used by the ancient Greek comedic playwright, Aristophanes. The unpublished lexicon was put together in 1910 by Ernst Wüst, a German classicist, and is entirely in his handwriting. It is written in three different languages: ancient Greek, Latin, and Wüst’s native German.&nbsp;



As no public model currently exists for this language combination, Rusten’s team had to train their own multilingual model from scratch. We spoke to Rusten and his colleague, Ethan Della Rocca, about how they trained their multilingual model and used it to transcribe Wüst’s lexicon.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="473" height="579" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114613.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32166" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114613.jpg 473w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114613-245x300.jpg 245w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114613-10x12.jpg 10w" sizes="(max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px" /><figcaption>Wüst’s entire lexicon was written by hand. © K G Saur Verlag</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wust-s-lexicon-to-aristophanes">Wüst’s lexicon to Aristophanes</h2>



Aristophanes’ comedies from the fifth century BC became famous not just for their satirical perspective on life in ancient Athens, but also for their unusual linguistic style. “Aristophanes&#8217; language is unique in classical Greek, combining high poetry and intellectual terminology with colloquialisms, terms from daily life, and even obscenities,” Rusten explained. “His lexical corpus was prized and studied already in antiquity.”



However, studying Aristophanes’ language in full requires having access to a comprehensive lexicon, detailing meanings, semantic relationships, and usage with key examples. “It was thought there was no adequate lexicon but in Cornell’s library we found a collection from 1984 of microfiche images of Ernst Wüst&#8217;s unpublished manuscript.” For the uninitiated, a microfiche is a small piece of photographic film containing images of pages of written material. Before digitisation, they were used to store materials, such as newspapers, without taking up too much physical space in an archive. In the 1980s, there was a push to use microfiches to ensure that manuscripts on decaying paper would be preserved forever.&nbsp;



One of those manuscripts was Wüst’s lexicon to Aristophanes from ca. 1910. “The publisher K G Saur decided to preserve the lexicon, without which it might have been lost forever, as the original manuscript has not been located to date. The publication had never been reviewed or even mentioned by any subsequent scholar, probably because accessing it was too daunting in the 1980s, not to mention reading it.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="456" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425-1024x456.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32167" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425-1024x456.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425-300x134.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425-768x342.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425-600x267.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114425.jpg 1225w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Wüst’s lexicon had been stored as microfiches since the 1980s. © K G Saur Verlag</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Creating a digital lexicon</h2>



Of course, the best way to truly preserve Wüst’s lexicon is to create a digital version of it, to allow scholars to quickly search through the manuscript’s 1500 pages and also provide additional information about the individual entries. “A digital version can link each word with its basic meaning, word family, semantics and distribution in the author’s works, as well as a complete list of all occurrences, sorted by work and hyperlinked to the passage that is their context.”&nbsp;



Rusten’s team had already created an online platform, Lexeis.org, making it possible to publish digital versions of lexicons in this way. “We have already done this for Thucydides and Plato, and now Aristophanes. Adding Wüst’s digitized lexicon will greatly improve the platform.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="281" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-1024x281.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32168" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-1024x281.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-300x82.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-768x211.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-1536x422.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-18x5.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340-600x165.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114340.jpg 1919w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The Lexeis.org platform shows both definitions and occurrences for words used by Aristophanes. © Lexeis.org</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Choosing a transcription platform</h2>



This wasn’t the first time the team had used technology to try and speed up the transcription process. “We had already tried a modern Greek OCR package but ancient Greek has many more accents and other diacritics, which are difficult for OCR platforms to distinguish. We had also used Tesseract to transcribe Ast’s Plato lexicon (which is also in ancient Greek, Latin, and German) but we only had limited success.”



With Wüst’s lexicon, the team came across Transkribus quite by chance. “We discovered the platform while searching for information about the German &#8220;Kurrent&#8221; script. Then we attended a five-hour training workshop held at Yale by Sara Mansutti, which showed that Transkribus had many clear advantages over other methods.”



“Firstly, it deals with handwritten scripts as well as print. It also provides a computing platform for training transcription models for specific scripts and hands, based on neural networks. We liked that the methods are clearly explained and accessible to non-specialists, with videos of past workshops and instructional web pages. Finally, it makes past users’ models available for use in transcriptions and re-training by new users. This saves a lot of time when creating models.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="441" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702-1024x441.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32169" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702-1024x441.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702-300x129.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702-768x330.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702-600x258.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114702.jpg 1262w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The team used Transkribus to create automatic transcriptions for the majority of the pages. © K G Saur Verlag</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Preparing the lexicon for transcription</h2>



Once they had decided to use Transkribus, the next challenge for the team was to create digital scans of the 1500 microfiches of Wüst’s lexicon. “Today there are high-quality microfiche digital scanning readers available. With the help of Cornell Library equipment and staff, and after much trial and error, we were able to produce acceptable jpeg images (detailed enough to zoom in on, but still under Transkribus’ 10MB limit) of all 1500 pages in just over four weeks.”



Armed with their digital scans, the team then selected 50 of the pages to transcribe manually as Ground Truth. Della Rocca explained their strategy. “We aimed to include pages with different structures, including both short entries with much space between each entry and extended entries with little space between the lines. One of the main considerations was getting good coverage of the different letters when placed in the starting position of the line, as it makes identifying each article and its respective lemma much easier.”



“We also selected pages representative of the varying degrees of marginalia present in the text, although we excluded marginalia too faint to discern—maybe someday we will locate the original manuscript!”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="431" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515-1024x431.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32170" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515-1024x431.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515-300x126.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515-768x323.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515-600x252.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-07-114515.jpg 1222w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>A wide variety of pages were chosen as training data. © K G Saur Verlag</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Training a multilingual model</h2>



The manual transcription of the 50 selected pages was carried out partly by student workers at the university, who had skills in ancient Greek and Latin but not always in German. Rusten recalled: “The initial problem for us as Americans was the unfamiliarity with the German Kurrent script. We used the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/transkribus-german-handwriting-m1/">German Handwriting M1</a> model to produce an initial transcription of the pages we were working on. It did a good job with the German, but misrecognized the Latin and Greek as German also.”&nbsp;



“This meant we had to manually transcribe the parts that had been misrecognized. Using the images we loaded in Transkribus’ collaborative online workspace, our student workers had to locate and transcribe the script or language they knew best for each page, starting with Greek from scratch, then Latin also from scratch, and finally correcting the automatically transcribed German. Once a student had transcribed everything they could, they turned the page over to the next transcriber.”&nbsp;



“Because we had different people focus on different scripts, rather than force everyone to try to do every script, the transcription took five of us just six weeks of full-time work.”



Della Rocca supervised the final stage. “After several tries at optimizing the model, our lowest character error rate (CER) is 7.21%. This is approximately a 36% reduction from our initial model’s CER of 11.20%, and we are trying to improve it further by running more training and experimenting with different configurations. This has greatly reduced our post-transcription correction time per page.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="544" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-1024x544.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32171" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-1024x544.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-300x159.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-768x408.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-1536x816.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten-600x319.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/rusten.jpg 1785w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Jeff Rusten (second from right), Ethan Della Rocca (left) and the rest of the Lexeis.org team. © Jeff Rusten</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Publishing the lexicon online</h2>



At the moment, the team is preparing the lexicon for publication on Lexeis.org. “The transcription still needs to be tagged in XML format for correction and analysis and linked to our XML text of Aristophanes. Then we can upload it to the platform. So the work is only just now becoming known but the support from granting agencies has been gratifying, and we look forward to publicizing it among scholars as soon as it is corrected and documented.”



The team are very happy with the way the project has turned out. “We only wish we had found Transkribus earlier! Henceforth we will use it for all of our OCR work, including print. We are currently re-transcribing a text which we had previously processed, to use the Transkribus model’s much more accurate Greek to correct our existing version.”



Della Rocca has some advice for other research groups wanting to train a multilingual model. “Stay calm if the initial training attempt fails — simply try other configurations. When first training your model, experiment with using different base models, as you’ll find that some may be more helpful than others. Then, once you have a working model, keep refining it with more transcribed and corrected pages to make it as accurate as possible.” We couldn’t agree more!



Thank you to Jeff and Ethan for talking to us about the project, and we wish you all the best with Lexeis.org.



For more about the project, check out Jeff Rusten’s talk about how they digitised Wüst’s lexicon: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdNg-j7eKJk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdNg-j7eKJk</a>

Training a multilingual model in Transkribus: Jeff Rusten

Go to any history museum or read any history book and you’ll find that many of the stories and events revolve around men. For example, <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=J8ui33HTCVoC&amp;pg=PT485&amp;lpg=PT485&amp;dq=Tetreault,+M.K+(1986).+Integrating+women%E2%80%99s+history:+The+case+of+United+States+history+high+school+textbooks.+The+History+Teacher&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=aHoXH0Cuc-&amp;sig=TrBCHTbzYAbx-H9OnQgX5ViAeRk&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI5Yyo1ZXryAIVTPtjCh3WCgt1#v=onepage&amp;q=Tetreault%2C%20M.K%20(1986).%20Integrating%20women%E2%80%99s%20history%3A%20The%20case%20of%20United%20States%20history%20high%20school%20textbooks.%20The%20History%20Teacher&amp;f=false">this study into history books</a> used in the US found that in one 819-page textbook, there was less than a single page of text referencing women. According to <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-schools-teach-womens-history-180971447/#:~:text=Their%20report%20found%20just%20how,in%20place%20as%20of%202017.">the Smithsonian Magazine</a>, out of the 737 historical figures included in educational standards for schools in the US, just 178 are women. And this bias in the educational system has an impact on students and the adults they grow up to be. A survey conducted by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.womenshistory.org/">National Women’s History Museum</a> found that less than a quarter of respondents could remember the accomplishments of historical female figures.



Women’s History Month is an awareness event that aims to reverse this trend. The history project highlights the imbalance between men’s and women’s history and gives women the place in history that they rightly deserve. It began in the US as a week-long annual celebration of famous women in American history, but the event soon spread around the world to focus on international women too. In 1987, Women’s History Week became Women’s History Month, and ever since then, the month of March has been dedicated to the history of women and their contributions to the world we live in today.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-unlocking-women-s-history-with-transkribus" style="text-align: justify;">Unlocking women’s history with Transkribus</h2>



As discussed in the introduction, many secondary historical sources, such as textbooks, have a gender bias towards men. One of the ways of combatting this is to focus on primary sources — for example, letters, diaries, or personal documents — written by women. These types of documents give us a wonderful view into the views and motivations of historical women, without the male bias of many history books. In the words of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0961202920010205" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">history professor June Purvis</a>: 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“Accounts written by women themselves enable their voices to be heard amongst that mass of sources that reflect the views of men.”</blockquote>







<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><div style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="500" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-1024x500.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32141" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-1024x500.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-300x146.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-768x375.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-1536x749.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-18x9.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87-600x293.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/da2059de-10bc-465c-828c-dce7e0d48c87.png 1560w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" style="font-size: 0.875rem; font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px; width: 1000px; height: 488.281px;"></div><figcaption style="text-align: justify; ">A page from Marjory Fleming’s diary with the automatic transcription from Transkribus. © READ-COOP</figcaption></figure><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><figcaption style="text-align: justify; "> </figcaption></figure>



Transkribus has been used in multiple projects to digitise and transcribe the handwritten words of women. By creating digital versions of these primary sources, they can be easily shared online, allowing more people to read these once-inaccessible documents and learn about the remarkable women who wrote them.



In honour of Women’s History Month this March, we would like to showcase three women whose lives have been recently unlocked with the help of Transkribus: Ada Lovelace, Margaretha Turnor, and Marjory Fleming. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ada-lovelace-english-mathematician-and-computer-pioneer" style="text-align: justify;">Ada Lovelace: English mathematician and computer pioneer</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><div style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Ada_Lovelace_in_1852.jpg/640px-Ada_Lovelace_in_1852.jpg" alt="" title="Ada Lovelace in her later years (public domain)" style="font-size: 0.875rem; font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px; width: 536.839px; height: 647.562px;"></div><figcaption style="text-align: justify;">Ada Lovelace in her later years. © Henry Phillips (1820–1868), son of Thomas Phillips, tratto dalla fotografia di Antoine Claudet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</figcaption></figure><figure class="wp-block-image"><figcaption style="text-align: justify;"> </figcaption></figure>







19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace may have been a talented poet and musician, but it is her work in computing that makes her one of the most remarkable figures in the history of technology. As one of the inventors of the first computer, known as the “Analytical Engine”, Lovelace was the creator of several technological theories, many of which still form the basis of computing today. There is even an annual <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://findingada.com/">Ada Lovelace Day</a>, which takes place each year in October and celebrates the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.



However, while we know a lot about Lovelace’s professional life, we know surprisingly little about the woman herself. But UCLA researcher Jessica Cook is trying to change this. Cook is leading a Transkribus project to digitise the Lovelace archive, housed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. By making Lovelace’s personal letters and notes more accessible, it will be easier for Cook and other researchers to get insights into the thoughts and feelings of this amazing mathematician.



You can find out more about the project in <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/lovelace-cook/">this blog post</a>. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-margaretha-turnor-political-commentator-and-lady-of-amerongen-castle" style="text-align: justify;">Margaretha Turnor: political commentator and lady of Amerongen Castle</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><div style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Margaretha_Turnor.jpg/640px-Margaretha_Turnor.jpg" alt="" style="font-size: 0.875rem; font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px; width: 540.074px; height: 794.922px;"></div><figcaption style="text-align: justify;">Margaretha Turnor in a portrait from 1661. © Jürgen Ovens, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</figcaption></figure><figure class="wp-block-image"><figcaption style="text-align: justify;"> </figcaption></figure>







Turnor may be less well-known than a leading figure like Lovelace, but she has a remarkable story in her own right. The 17th-century Dutch heiress was married to diplomat Godard Adriaan van Reede and managed the family estate of Amerongen Castle. Due to his job, van Reede spent months at a time away from home. During these periods, the couple wrote many letters to each other, discussing everything from the political challenges facing the Netherlands to updates about the reconstruction of Amerongen Castle. Turnor’s insights into the world of politics in the Dutch Republic are particularly fascinating, especially as there were few women commenting on the political realm during this time.



Over a thousand of Turnor’s letters are now housed at the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/english">Utrecht Archives</a>, which used the documents to create a public AI model for Dutch handwriting of the late 17th century.



You can try the model out for yourself <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/dutch-late-17th-century/">here</a>. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-marjory-fleming-child-poet-and-prolific-diary-writer" style="text-align: justify;">Marjory Fleming: child poet and prolific diary writer</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><div style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" width="293" height="390" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bbdee4f6-6a5c-4817-a17e-4975fe03552cebfcd52523bc29d5b8_244692396_10158414540337083_3908685474035627710_n.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32142" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bbdee4f6-6a5c-4817-a17e-4975fe03552cebfcd52523bc29d5b8_244692396_10158414540337083_3908685474035627710_n.jpg 293w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bbdee4f6-6a5c-4817-a17e-4975fe03552cebfcd52523bc29d5b8_244692396_10158414540337083_3908685474035627710_n-225x300.jpg 225w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bbdee4f6-6a5c-4817-a17e-4975fe03552cebfcd52523bc29d5b8_244692396_10158414540337083_3908685474035627710_n-9x12.jpg 9w" sizes="(max-width: 293px) 100vw, 293px" style="font-size: 0.875rem; font-weight: initial; letter-spacing: 0.4px; width: 361px; height: 480.495px;"></div><figcaption style="text-align: justify;">Marjory Fleming’s grave in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. © Atlas Obscura</figcaption></figure>







Also known as Marjorie Fleming (the name used on her <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Fleming">Wikipedia page</a>) as well as “Pet Marjorie” (the name given to her by her family), Fleming was a child writer and poet who lived in Scotland in the early 19th century. She is most famous for her precocious diary, which was created as part of school lessons with her cousin, Isabella Keith, and demonstrates the creativity and free thinking of the young girl. It garnered much respect from other more established writers in the country, including Robert Louis Stevenson.



Fleming unfortunately passed away when she was just eight years old. Her diary was given to the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nls.uk/">National Library of Scotland</a> in 1930 and a hundred years later, was digitised and transcribed as part of a <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ed.ac.uk/">University of Edinburgh</a> project. It was then uploaded to the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/readsearch/">read&amp;search platform</a>, making it accessible to everyone.



You can read the full diaries of Marjory Fleming <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://transkribus.eu/r/marjory-fleming/#/">here</a>. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-try-transkribus-for-yourself" style="text-align: justify;">Try Transkribus for yourself</h2>



Transkribus is an AI-powered platform that transcribes handwritten text at the push of a button.



You can try the full version of Transkribus at <a href="http://app.transkribus.eu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">app.transkribus.eu</a> or try our demo version below.




<div id="t-ai-app" data-embed="1" data-lang="en">
 <script src="https://transkribus.ai/t-ai-inline.js"></script>
</div>

Women&#8217;s History Month: Unlocking the lives of three inspiring women from history

By Fiona Park



Not everyone who works with history is a professional historian. From hobby genealogists to volunteers in local museums, laypeople have always played an important role in keeping history alive. And in the digital age, there is a new way for volunteers to get involved.



The <a href="https://pro.europeana.eu/project/enricheuropeana">EnrichEuropeana</a>+ project is a <a href="https://readcoop.eu/what-is-citizen-science/">citizen science</a> initiative. It brings ordinary people together to work towards a common scientific or academic goal. In the case of Enrich Europeana, this involves creating fully annotated digital versions of the Europeana Collections. To achieve this, volunteers from all over Europe transcribe and enrich handwritten sources using the Transcribathon platform: a custom-made website that allows volunteers to transcribe from home using their normal computer.



In 2021, EnrichEuropeana+ decided to update the Transcribathon platform with new technology and a new look. As the experts in transcription software, READ-COOP were asked to be part of the project, and we gladly accepted. Here is what happened.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-enriching-european-cultural-heritage">Enriching European cultural heritage</h2>



The Europeana project was launched back in 2008. The goal was to preserve pieces of cultural heritage, such as letters, portraits and official documents, from across the continent and make them accessible to the public. This resulted in the <a href="https://www.europeana.eu/en/collections">Europeana Collections</a>: digital collections of items grouped by topic or time period. For example, if you look at the <a href="https://www.europeana.eu/en/collections/topic/29-building">“Building” collection</a>, you can find a photo of the <a href="https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/916118/S_TEK_photo_TEKA0113986">Manhattan Life Insurance building</a> in New York (housed at the <a href="https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/en/">Swedish National Museum of Science and Technolog</a>y) as well as a newspaper article about the construction of a <a href="https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/511/libvar_ARTICLE_61230">new student house</a> in Bulgaria (housed at the <a href="http://www.libvar.bg/index.php/eng/">Pencho Slaveykov Public Library</a> in Varna). By making artefacts like these digitally available, it means everyone can enjoy and learn from them, without having to take a trip to Stockholm or Varna to do so.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/gG57CO3WEWREPOZt5UnN5gYBjnpT9qh-7jlw2Q1JQX7f2-7iM_EiJzaZhNvzpAZ4PBZQ6hiZkP3EttOjjLNc6JgHvvxuwxZJx5yF5z1SYgsnF5xy7Nfzx-qL_u0JxdKmEQh7oaJ9Gkt5EeVLPJ0aiSo" alt="" width="323" height="407"/><figcaption>Manhattan Life Insurance Building in New York © Okänd</figcaption></figure></div>






But the biggest advantage of digital collections is that they are fully searchable. If a user is looking for newspaper articles about constructions in Bulgaria, they can simply type in those search terms and find what they are looking for much more quickly than they would if searching through a physical collection. The searching process is made possible through metadata — extra information about the artefact that is programmed into its digital version. Metadata isn’t just the title, date and description that you would find in a regular museum but also many other entities such as names and places that are mentioned in the artefact, or tags summarising its content. When the user types in a search term, the collection searches through the metadata of all the items, finds the ones matching the search term and shows the item to the user.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A large citizen science initiative</h2>



However, transcribing digital artefacts and enriching them with metadata requires a human being to look at or read through the material, assign tags and other metadata and input these into a computer system. Ideally, the transcription and metadata should also be checked by a second human being, to ensure that everything is inputted correctly. Of course, this takes quite a bit of time, and most museums, libraries, and archives simply don’t have the resources to input transcriptions and metadata themselves.



So Europeana came up with a novel solution to this problem: citizen science. The transcriptions and metadata would be added to the digital artefacts by a team of volunteers, leaving museum staff free to do more specialist work. The volunteers would be trained on how to input the data using their own computer at home, making it possible for anyone around the world to contribute to digitising the Europeana Collections.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="433" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03-1024x433.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32086" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03-1024x433.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03-300x127.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03-768x325.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03-600x254.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image03.jpg 1295w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Documents from the “Saxony At Work” run © Europeana Foundation</figcaption></figure>







A key part of the project is the <a href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/">Europeana Transcribathon platform</a>, where volunteers can view materials, transcribe texts, and enrich them with metadata using just their regular computer at home. Europeana also organise transcription events known as “runs”. Each run has a particular theme, for example, <a href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/runs/sachsen-at-work/">Saxony’s industrial culture</a> or <a href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/runs/manuscritos_no_palco_pt/">theatrical manuscripts in Portuguese</a>, and a specified time period, usually several days or weeks. During the run, volunteers can transcribe the documents on that theme and often also compete against each other to see who can process the most documents in the time period. While the “winners” often don’t win anything more than the honour of being at the top of the leaderboard, the sense of competition increases volunteers’ motivation and makes the whole event more fun for everyone.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Incorporating Transkribus into Transcribathon</h2>



The original Transcribathon platform, which was created in 2016, was a pure transcription editor. Volunteers could manually transcribe text using their computer, but no automatic transcriptions were possible. In 2021, Europeana decided to update the platform with handwriting recognition software. This would mean that volunteers no longer had to do time-consuming manual transcriptions, they could simply proofread an automatic transcription. As proofreading generally takes much less time, volunteers would be able to process more documents in the same amount of time, helping the online collections to expand more rapidly.



The easiest way to create a new digital platform is to base it on something that already exists, and that is exactly what Europeana did. READ-COOP already had a functioning platform for the transcription and enrichment of historical documents (Transkribus) and a way for other platforms to communicate directly with Transkribus (the metagrapho API). This would form the basis of the new Transcribathon platform.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="576" height="430" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image04.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32085" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image04.jpg 576w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image04-300x224.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image04-16x12.jpg 16w" sizes="(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px" /><figcaption>The metagrapho API allows other platforms to access Transkribus technology © READ-COOP</figcaption></figure>







For the uninitiated, an API is a piece of software that acts as a messenger between two different platforms. A user requests information on one platform, and the platform sends this request to the API of another platform. Once this second platform has a response to the request, the API brings it back to the first platform and the person gets the information they need.&nbsp; A good example of this is a flight booking site. A user wants to find out what flights are available between two different cities, so they input a departure airport and destination on a flight booking site. An API then sends this message to a second platform, in this case, the computer system of the airline. This computer system finds the possible flights and the API sends this information back to the flight booking site. The user can then see all the available flights.



The new Transcribathon platform works in a similar way. When a volunteer wants to get an automatic transcription of a text, they request this on the Transcribathon platform. Transcribathon then sends this request to the metagrapho API, which uses handwriting recognition technology to process the image and generate an automatic transcription. Finally, once the processing is complete, the Transcribathon platform can access the transcription and show it to the volunteer, again via the metagrapho API.&nbsp;



Using an existing API in this way meant the Europeana team didn’t have to build their own text recognition system from scratch. They simply had to build a platform that the metagrapho API could interact with, enabling them to access the technology in the main Transkribus platform. This meant that Transkribus’ text recognition technology could be integrated into the platform quite quickly, without too much costly development.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="775" height="491" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image07.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32084" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image07.jpg 775w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image07-300x190.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image07-768x487.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image07-18x12.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image07-600x380.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px" /><figcaption>A Croatian postcard from the Europeana Collections. © Dragutin Hirc</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">An easy-to-use transcription editor</h2>



Updating the technology behind Transcribathon meant that the transcription editor — the part a volunteer uses to input or proofread transcriptions — was no longer able to cope with the richer data format that it was receiving back from the metagrapho API. Therefore, it was necessary to build a new transcription editor for Transcribathon. This would, among other things, allow volunteers to click on a line of the transcription, and see the corresponding line in the image of the text.



Again, it was decided to not create a new editor right from scratch. Instead, READ-COOP took the existing editor in the Transkribus software, modified it to fit the requirements of Transcribathon, and turned it into a widget. The widget was then simply inserted into the Transcribathon platform, making it possible for users to access and edit the transcriptions generated by the metagrapho API. Like with the API, using the existing Transkribus editor and simply modifying it also saved precious development time and costs.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="362" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-1024x362.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32083" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-1024x362.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-300x106.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-768x271.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-1536x543.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-18x6.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05-600x212.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image05.jpg 1814w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The new-look Transcribathon editor © Europeana Foundation</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The power of collaboration</h2>



In short, by using the existing Transkribus technology, the EnrichEuropeana+ project was able to update the Transcribathon platform much more quickly and efficiently than would have been possible if they had developed everything from scratch. With the metagrapho API and custom transcription editor widget, Transcribathon could take the best of READ-COOP’s technology and modify it to suit the requirements of this unique citizen science project.



And the project has already been a success. The new version of the platform has recently been used for several runs, including the transcription of <a href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/runs/zagreb-2022/#results">historical documents in Croatian</a> as well as a multilingual run of <a href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/runs/19th-century/">19th-century documents</a>, in which volunteers processed over 1400 documents in just 6 weeks. We look forward to seeing what future collaborations between EnrichEuropeana+ and Transkribus will bring!



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="785" height="514" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image06.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-32082" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image06.jpg 785w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image06-300x196.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image06-768x503.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image06-18x12.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Image06-600x393.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 785px) 100vw, 785px" /><figcaption>One of the many documents from the Zagreb run © Ivan Ulčnik</figcaption></figure>











This project was a Europeana Generic Services&nbsp;project and it was co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2-1024x180.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32117" width="401" height="70" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2-1024x180.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2-300x53.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2-768x135.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2-18x3.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2-600x105.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/en_horizontal_cef_logo_2.png 1076w" sizes="(max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></figure>

A collaborative approach: READ-COOP and the Europeana Foundation join forces to enhance the Transcribathon platform

Creating books in the Middle Ages was a challenge. Before the introduction of the printing press, all books were painstakingly copied out by hand and those such as the Bible could take several years to complete.



One particularly famous type of manuscript from the medieval period is the illuminated manuscript. The words in these manuscripts were embellished with ornate borders, detailed illustrations, and gold-leaf work, turning them into beautiful pieces of medieval art. Better still, many of them have survived to the present day, making them a rich source of information for medievalists and other historians.



In this post, we are going to take a look at what exactly an illuminated manuscript is, talk a little about the digitisation of them, and found out just why so many illuminated manuscripts feature knights fighting snails.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-an-illuminated-manuscript">What is an illuminated manuscript?</h2>



Illuminated manuscripts were a type of manuscript that were produced mainly in Western Europe from the 6th century until the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Like all manuscripts, they were written by hand on a page of parchment, usually a piece of animal skin known as &#8220;vellum&#8221;. Many illuminated manuscripts were then bound into an early type of book called a &#8220;codex&#8221; (&#8220;codices&#8221; in the plural). A codex consisted of numerous sheets of parchment sandwiched between two pieces of wood, just like a modern book has pages bound between the covers. Luckily for today&#8217;s medieval historians, the wood preserved the pages inside, keeping them in peak condition and making it possible to still read the manuscripts today.



But what sets illuminated manuscripts apart from other medieval documents are the ornate illustrations, or &#8220;illuminations&#8221;, that adorn each page. Illuminations ranged from decorative borders around the page to a full-page illustration depicting an event described in the text. The first letter on a manuscript page — the &#8220;illuminated capital&#8221; — was also often enlarged and colourfully decorated. Often, this decoration was then enhanced with gold or silver leaf, especially if the manuscript was of particular importance. These shiny materials were said to &#8220;illuminate&#8221; the text, giving the manuscripts their name.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="666" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1-1024x666.png" alt="" class="wp-image-32035" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1-1024x666.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1-300x195.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1-768x499.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1-600x390.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/medieval-manuscript-1400x900-1.png 1400w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The Bird Psalter, London (1284) © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-were-illuminated-manuscripts-made">How were illuminated manuscripts made?</h2>



The first illuminated manuscripts were created in monasteries in Northern Europe, most notably in the British Isles and Ireland. Most monasteries at the time had not just a library but also a &#8220;scriptorium&#8221;, where manuscripts and books were created.



Some monks worked as scribes. They were responsible for preparing and cutting the vellum and adding the text to the page in a certain colour of ink. If more colours were required, the page would then be passed to another scribe working with that colour. Other scribes in the room would be responsible for proofreading the text and checking that everything had been copied correctly. Once the scribes were finished with the text, the page was handed over to another monk, known as the &#8220;illuminator&#8221;, who worked essentially as an artist. He would add the illustrations to the page, as well as any gold leaf decoration that was required.



By the late medieval period, monks were no longer the only people creating illuminated manuscripts. With the rise of universities and the middle class, books started to become more popular and book production was increasingly more profitable. Therefore, booksellers in cities started to hire their own scribes and illuminators to create books outside of the monastery context.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Museo_dell%27Opera_del_Duomo_%28Florence%29_-_Illuminated_manuscript-3.jpg/640px-Museo_dell%27Opera_del_Duomo_%28Florence%29_-_Illuminated_manuscript-3.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



Musical notation was also illuminated. © <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Yair-haklai">Yair Haklai</a> / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-kind-of-illuminated-manuscripts-are-there">What kind of illuminated manuscripts are there?</h2>



As you might expect from a monastery, the majority of illuminated manuscripts are religious in nature. This included Bibles, copies of certain gospels or religious texts, and most commonly, books of hours. A book of hours was a collection of prayers, texts, and psalms, organised into the different canonical hours of the day. They became enormously popular during the late medieval period when rich families would commission individual collections for their households. Due to the sheer numbers created during that period, many books of hours have survived until the present day.



But illuminated manuscripts were also created on secular topics, too. Visual topics, for example, herbs or astrology, were the ideal material for illuminated books, and many such manuscripts were produced. Illuminated texts were also created about the lives of saints or famous adventurers, particularly towards the end of the Middle Ages.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Book_of_hours_by_the_Master_of_Zweder_van_Culemborg_-_KB_79_K_2_-_folios_112v_%28left%29_and_113r_%28right%29.jpg/640px-Book_of_hours_by_the_Master_of_Zweder_van_Culemborg_-_KB_79_K_2_-_folios_112v_%28left%29_and_113r_%28right%29.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



The book of hours by the Master(s) of Zweder van Culemborg (public domain)



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-are-the-margins-so-important-in-illuminated-manuscripts">Why are the margins so important in illuminated manuscripts?</h2>



If you search online for information about illuminated manuscripts, you will find that many people talk about the &#8220;marginalia&#8221;. For historians, it is often the details included in these margins that are particularly interesting.



Creating manuscripts was difficult work. Scribes worked long hours, usually in silence, and copying the same text all day long was tedious. Therefore, they would often leave <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/cheeky-complaints-monks-scribbled-in-the-margins-of-manuscripts/254868/">personal comments in the margins</a>, such as: &#8220;The ink is thin&#8221;, &#8220;I am very cold&#8221;, or more poetically, &#8220;As the harbour is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.&#8221;



Perhaps even more shocking are the small illustrations that appear in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts. These often included nudity or scenes of a sexual nature, which were very much at odds with the religious content on the page! Another common theme in marginalia was illustrations of animals, particularly of animals doing human activities such as baking bread or playing instruments. Scholars believe these were often drawn as a form of artistic parody.



One animal-themed manuscript illumination frequently found in marginalia is the depiction of a knight fighting a snail. These little illustrations can be found in various manuscripts throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, and there are <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/09/knight-v-snail.html">several ideas about their meaning</a>. Some scholars believe the snails represent the Lombards, a group vilified in medieval times for their unchivalrous behaviour. Others say the illuminations symbolise the struggles of the poor against an oppressive aristocracy. Whatever the reason, it is details like these that make a medieval manuscript so fascinating to study.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://blogs.bl.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef019aff95ab29970c-500wi" alt=""/></figure>



Knight vs Snail from the Gorleston Psalter © British Library



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-which-are-the-most-famous-manuscripts">Which are the most famous manuscripts?</h2>



There are thousands of illuminated manuscripts still around today, which can be viewed in an institution such as a museum or library. However, some manuscripts hold a particularly important place in history. Here are three examples:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-book-of-kells">The Book of Kells</h3>



This 9th-century manuscript is probably one of the most famous around the world. It contains the four gospels of the New Testament, adorned with many different illuminations, including Celtic knotwork typical of County Meath, where the book was stored for centuries.



Nowadays, the Book of Kells can be seen at <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.tcd.ie/">Trinty College Dublin</a>, who are a member of <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/about/">READ-COOP</a>. Only certain pages of the manuscript are on display at any one time, and these are rotated frequently. It can also be viewed online on the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/collections/ks65hc20t">Trinity College website</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/KellsFol114rArrestOfChrist.jpg/640px-KellsFol114rArrestOfChrist.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



Christ&#8217;s arrest in the Book of Kells (Folio 114v) © Trinity College Dublin



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-lindisfarne-gospels">The Lindisfarne Gospels</h3>



Written in the 8th century, this renowned illuminated manuscript was produced at the island monastery of Lindisfarne, in the north of England. Like the Book of Kells, it is a copy of the four gospels and is a prime example of medieval manuscript art. Over 90 colours were produced for the book, with gold used in just a few places.



The Lindisfarne Gospels are housed at the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bl.uk/">British Library</a> in London, who are also a <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/about/">READ-COOP</a> member.



<img decoding="async" src="https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/dst%20discovering%20sacred%20texts/collection%20items/lindisfarne-gospels-cotton_ms_nero_d_iv_f027.jpg">A page from the Lindisfarne Gospels. © British Library



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-westminster-abbey-bestiary">Westminster Abbey Bestiary</h3>



In the Middle Ages, bestiaries were one of the most popular types of illuminated manuscript. Officially an encyclopedia of the animal kingdom, they often included fantastical beasts as well as actual creatures, accompanied by an explanation of the animal&#8217;s Christian significance. The illuminations in these manuscripts were sometimes so famous that they were replicated in other types of medieval art, such as carvings and tapestries.



The Westminster Abbey Bestiary is a fine example of a bestiary. Believed to have been produced in York at the end of the 14th century, it contained 164 miniatures of animals with Latin descriptions alongside. The bestiary is preserved by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/library-research">Library of Westminster Abbey</a> in London and can be viewed on request.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="718" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-1024x718.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-32036" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-1024x718.jpeg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-300x210.jpeg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-768x538.jpeg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-1536x1077.jpeg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-2048x1436.jpeg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-18x12.jpeg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FabogbTWYAA5T46-600x421.jpeg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>A fantastical creature from the Westminster Abbey Bestiary. © Westminster Abbey</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-you-digitise-an-illuminated-manuscript">How do you digitise an illuminated manuscript?</h2>



Thanks to handwriting recognition technology like <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/?sc=Transkribus">Transkribus</a>, it is becoming easier and easier to digitise and transcribe historical manuscripts. Many museums and libraries have already scanned their collections of illuminated manuscripts and made them publically available online, for example, the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm">Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts</a> at the British Library. These scans can then be inputted into Transkribus to create an automatic transcription of the text.



However, illuminated manuscripts still cause some problems for handwriting recognition software, mainly because the software sometimes has trouble distinguishing between the ornate text and the illustrations. This is particularly true for illuminated capital letters, which are a mixture of both text and image.



That said, technology is improving all the time. The READ-COOP team is currently developing improved layout recognition software, which will be capable of recognising images much more accurately and should be a big boost for medievalists looking to transcribe these kinds of manuscripts.



Additionally, historians in the Transkribus community have also been working hard to produce public models that are suitable for transcribing medieval manuscripts, including illuminated manuscripts. Below are some models to try:







<ul><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/latin-and-german-gothic-book-scripts/">Latin and German Gothic Book Scripts</a> &#8211; This model is designed for use with book scripts from the 13th-15th centuries and was trained with a variety of different documents in both Latin and German.</li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/medieval-latin/">Medieval Latin 13th-15th Century</a> &#8211; Also suitable for documents from the 13th-15th centuries, this model was trained specifically for the transcription of legal documents in medieval Latin, including idiosyncratic abbreviations and random word hyphenations.</li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/old-czech-handwriting-with-spaces/">Old Czech Handwriting (with spaces)</a> &#8211; This new model was trained on two old Czech illuminated manuscripts, making it one of the more suitable models for manuscripts of this kind.</li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/french-and-latin-chancery-documents/">French and Latin Chancery Documents</a> &#8211; Trained as part of the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://himanis.huma-num.fr/app//">HIMANIS project</a>, this model is designed for medieval chancery documents in French and Latin.</li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/charter-scripts-german-latin-french/">Medieval Scripts M2.4</a> &#8211; The documents from the HIMANIS project were also used to train this more general model for medieval manuscripts, along with manuscripts from several other similar projects. It covers several languages, including Dutch, French, German, Latin, and Flemish.</li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/latin-and-dutch/">Latin and Dutch</a> &#8211; For medieval legal records and minutes in Dutch, this model is ideal. It was trained by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.huygens.knaw.nl/en/">Huygens Institute for History of the Netherlands</a>.</li></ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-for-more-information-about-how-to-use-public-models-with-transkribus-check-out-this-how-to-guide">For more information about how to use public models with Transkribus, check out this <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/howto/handwritten-text-recognition-in-transkribus-lite/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How-to Guide</a>.</h3>

Gold, Gospels and Knights Fighting Snails: An Introduction To Illuminated Manuscripts

We are excited to announce the latest version of Transkribus, which includes several significant improvements to our document editor. Below are the key updates in this release:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-unified-text-and-layout-editor">Unified Text and Layout Editor</h3>



Our new document editor features a unified text and layout editor view, making it easier for users to work with historical documents. With this update, users no longer need to switch between the editing of the recognised layout and the text. The unified editor allows users to work with the document in a single view, streamlining the document editing process and improving efficiency.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-improved-tagging-and-styling">Improved Tagging and Styling</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/tagging.mp4"></video></figure>



We have improved the tagging and styling of text in our editor to make the document editing experience smoother and more efficient. Users can now assign tags directly to highlighted text, and the tags displayed can be configured to show only the relevant ones. We have also added the ability to choose whether to display text with or without serifs, providing greater flexibility in how users work with documents.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-enhanced-user-interface-and-customization">Enhanced User Interface and Customization</h3>



Our goal is to make working with documents easier and more intuitive, so we have redesigned the editor to have a clean and powerful user interface. In addition to the new editor, we have added customization options such as the ability to center the image of the document automatically with the line clicked on, or to keep the image where it is when users click on text in the right text editor pane. Additionally, you can now choose if you want to hide or show the line numbers of the transcribed text via the advanced settings. These customizations allow users to work in the way that best suits their needs.



We believe that these updates will significantly enhance the document editing experience for our users, and we are excited to see how they help you to unlock the past.



<a href="https://www.loom.com/share/0459ef7180c74af3aef6254364ade959">
 New Document Editor &#8211; Watch Video
 <img decoding="async" style="max-width:600px;" src="https://cdn.loom.com/sessions/thumbnails/0459ef7180c74af3aef6254364ade959-1678115360926-with-play.gif">
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New Document Editor: Enhanced Editing Experience with Unified Editor and Improved Tagging

Transkribus wasn’t developed overnight. In fact, it was the result of decades of hard work. And although different people have contributed to Transkribus’ development over the years, there is one man who has been there since the very beginning: Günter Mühlberger. Originally a researcher in German language and literature, Günter first became interested in digital humanities in the late 1990s, when the internet was still in its infancy and the idea that a computer programme could automatically transcribe thousands of handwritten documents at the click of a button seemed like just a dream.



Fast forward two decades and that exact programme is now used by people around the world to conduct meaningful research into historical documents. As the chair of READ-COOP, Günter is responsible for making sure that Transkribus continues to develop and help these researchers with their work. We sat down with Günter to find out more about the history of Transkribus and discover what is next for the platform.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31891" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-300x200.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-768x512.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-18x12.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC00022-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Günter Mühlberger played a crucial role in the development of Transkribus.</figcaption></figure>



 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-all-began-with-a-christmas-party">It all began with a Christmas party</h2>



The late 1990s was a time very different to now. Internet and emails had just been introduced, radically changing the way universities function and opening up a myriad of opportunities for researchers.&nbsp;



One of those researchers was Günter Mühlberger at the <a href="https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/">University of Innsbruck</a>. The German language scholar already had some experience in the growing field of digital humanities but a discovery one Christmas proved to be the spark for a new kind of project.



“We had the work Christmas party at 7 pm, and I had an hour before at the office. I was searching a bit on the internet and found out that the EU had a programme called ‘Telematics for Libraries’,” Günter explained. “I immediately thought of the newspaper clipping service at our department, which used to cut out interesting newspaper articles on literary issues from a number of German newspapers and store them in a large archive.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb-1024x839.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31892" width="350" height="287" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb-1024x839.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb-300x246.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb-768x629.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb-15x12.jpg 15w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb-600x491.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ulb.jpg 1172w" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" /><figcaption>The library at the University of Innsbruck, where Günter&#8217;s first OCR project took place. © University of Innsbruck</figcaption></figure></div>


“So at the Christmas party, I approached the head of this archive and said I had an idea for digitising this kind of collection and that we might get some money from the EU. And we decided to go for it.” The team put in an application and while they weren’t granted the full amount, the EU gave them enough funding to get this <a href="https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/LB5629/">first large OCR project</a> off the ground. They managed to create a system that could digitise the newspaper cuttings and store them digitally, as opposed to physically. “Everyone wanted to have the project, and it was clear that this was the start of something bigger.”











<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Creating the ALTO format</h2>



That something bigger came in the form of a second OCR project, called the <a href="https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/IST-1999-20021">Metadata Engine</a>. In English-speaking countries, libraries had been using OCR to digitise books for some time. But in German-speaking countries, most books until 1942 were printed in the Fraktur script, and there weren’t yet any OCR engines capable of recognising Fraktur. So Günter and his team set out to solve this problem with the Metadata Engine.



“There was no solution already around so we invited the <a href="https://www.abbyy.com/">ABBYY company</a> to develop the first OCR engine for Fraktur. At that time, the digital data that came out of the engine was mainly full text but did not contain all the internal information, such as the coordinates of the words. We were of the opinion that we needed an open format containing all this data too, so that we could work with it later on.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop-1024x766.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31893" width="398" height="298" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop-1024x766.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop-300x224.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop-768x574.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop-16x12.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop-600x449.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1280px-Goethe_Faust_Opening_Fraktur_20052706_crop.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 398px) 100vw, 398px" /><figcaption>© User:Berteun / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0</figcaption></figure></div>






The team put their heads together and came up with the Analysed Layout and Text Object (ALTO) format, which allowed text and layout to be stored in such a way that it could serve several use cases, such as displaying text and image together, just like Transkribus does today.



To publicise the work done in the project, the team went on a tour of libraries in the US. “We went to Harvard, Stanford, the New York Public Library and even to the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/">Library of Congress</a> in Washington DC, where we had an audience of nearly 450 people.”



“It didn’t start well. We were stuck in a traffic jam and were more than an hour late getting to the venue. Then the projector didn’t work and people had to wait for another half an hour. But despite all that, everyone listened so carefully and it was really great just to talk to everyone, to explain what we were doing. And soon afterwards, the Library of Congress decided to implement the ALTO format into their systems, which was a really big achievement.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Turning OCR into HTR</h2>



On the back of the success of the Metadata Engine project, Günter then took part as a sub-project leader in another large OCR project, coordinated by the <a href="https://www.kb.nl/en">Royal Library of the Netherlands</a>. The IMPACT project focused on recognizing ancient books and newspapers. “It was a really large project with 12 million euros,” Günter explained. “But it more or less failed completely, because it was too focused on trying to improve the old technology.”



Unlike today’s HTR technology, traditional OCR technology worked by using a series of templates for each character. If the OCR system was presented with an image of a new character, it compared the shape of the character against all the different templates and chose the one it was most similar to.



“But with complicated characters, such as handwritten ones, this technology doesn’t work. The characters are just so different from the templates that the system can’t identify them. And this makes recognising handwritten documents very difficult.”



Thankfully, a team from IBM was also involved in the project and they came up with an intriguing solution. “They had the idea of isolating single words and then presenting the digital version of the word to the user. The user can then correct any mistakes in the transcription and this information goes back to the engine to improve the whole thing. This is the very idea that Transkribus is based on and you could say it was the beginning of the platform.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="528" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-1024x528.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31894" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-1024x528.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-300x155.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-768x396.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-1536x792.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-2048x1056.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-18x9.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/In-archive-600x309.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Transkribus was created to make archives more accessible for everyone. © University of Innsbruck</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A winning collaboration</h2>



The IBM team weren’t the only ones working on this kind of technology. The <a href="http://www.upv.es/en">Technical University of Valencia</a> were also conducting research into new text recognition systems, and they approached the Innsbruck team about a collaboration. “We had a good standing at the EU, and there was a new call for the digitisation of cultural heritage. Valencia drafted a proposal, it was accepted, and together with several partners such as <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/">University College London</a>, the TranScriptorium project started at the beginning of 2013.”



TranScriptorium was the first real project into handwriting recognition. Back then, the technology was a lot slower — it took roughly 20 minutes to recognise just a single page. But the biggest difference between then and now was that all the Ground Truth was generated in-house by the team. There was no way for the user to input or train their own ground-truth data.



“I realised from the very beginning that it would be a lot of work to generate Ground Truth for the learning algorithm. Also, that we would need a user tool for this so that Ground Truth could be easily created, as well as gathered in a standardized format and a central place. Sebastian Colutto created a Java tool for the Ground Truth creation which was then connected to a central server, where all the Ground Truth could be stored.”&nbsp;



This rudimentary tool was effectively the first Transkribus user interface and set the groundwork for the platform to come. “The very first version went online in February 2015. In the following summer, we made it public and people liked it. They liked that you could have an automatic transcription but without losing that connection to the image.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Creating a virtual research environment</h2>



While the TranScriptorium project was taking place, another interesting EU project call appeared. “They were providing funding for the creation of virtual research environments and that was exactly what we were doing. So we drafted a proposal and it was the only proposal out of about 70 or 80 to receive the maximum score of 15 points. This gave us the chance to realise our idea on the basis of a public investment of 8.2 million euros.”



This idea was to create a platform that would allow users to get automatic transcriptions of handwritten documents and train AI models that could read specific types of handwriting. In other words, the team wanted to make Transkribus a reality.



“We had promised to get the platform up and running from the very first day of the project  which was the 1st January 2016.” From this point on, Transkribus only grew in popularity. At the first-ever Transkribus user conference in 2017, the <a href="https://www.mathematik.uni-rostock.de/forschung/projekte/citlab/">CITlab</a> team from the University of Rostock together with the <a href="https://planet.de/">Planet AI company</a> demonstrated the new baseline recognition technology, which would greatly improve layout analysis and went down very well with the 120 conference attendees.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe title="01 Transkribus - the status quo and future plans" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_7V8iXFzx_E?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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“Soon afterwards the CITlab team also introduced the new HTR+ engine, which was 40-50% better than the previous one. Before, you had about a 15% character error rate. But with the same training data and the new engine, you got a 7-8% error rate.&nbsp; And the response was overwhelming. With the new and improved error rate, Transkribus suddenly became a viable option for the majority of researchers. Then the <a href="https://www.prhlt.upv.es/">team from Valencia</a> introduced <a href="https://github.com/jpuigcerver/PyLaia">PyLaia</a> &#8211; an open-source HTR engine which is now the core engine in Transkribus.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The founding of READ-COOP</h2>



By this point, it was clear that Transkribus was here to stay. But the question arose: who would be responsible for the platform? Who would fix bugs and maintenance issues and develop the platform further? Back then, everything was based at the University of Innsbruck. However, as only a small percentage of users were from Austria, it was unlikely they would want to host it forever.



It was also important to make sure that all the project partners had their say in the management of the platform they had all worked so hard to create. The solution was to create a cooperative so that ownership could be shared among stakeholders. “The idea was that it could be a kind of shared service but with a commercial impact, so we could pay for the maintenance and development of the platform. However, back then, none of us really knew any details about cooperatives.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="413" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office-1024x413.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31896" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office-1024x413.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office-300x121.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office-768x310.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office-18x7.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office-600x242.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/office.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The READ-COOP office today.</figcaption></figure>



And setting it up proved to be harder than the team had imagined. “We were pretty much the first European cooperative to be set up in Austria, so there was a lot of bureaucracy to deal with.” Then there was the question of money. The team needed to raise a certain amount of money to set up the cooperative, and project partners were asked to become “founding members” for a modest fee. “Finding enough founding members to do this wasn’t too difficult. What was more difficult was getting them all in the same room at the same time to sign the papers.”



In the end though, thanks to a lot of patience, hard work, and bureaucratic know-how, the Austrian courts finally signed off on the cooperative. In July 2019 — over 20 years after Günter first had the idea for his “telematics” project — READ-COOP became the official guardians of the Transkribus platform.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">20 years of digitisation success</h2>



The last two decades have been an exciting time for handwriting recognition, and Günter Mühlberger’s projects have been at the forefront of that technology. We asked Günter what he is most proud of during that time.



“I’m proud of two things. Firstly, that we have such a great team working on this. Secondly, that so many people today use Transkribus for their research. My role in this whole thing was to have the feeling that this is the right moment, that there are people out there with the right technology, and that we can combine skills and create a tool that will help a lot of people not only in the academic and archival sphere but also with their family documents.”



“For the future, I hope we will continue to be able to support people in this way. Only a very small percentage of the documents in the world are digitised and there are still so many interesting documents out there waiting to be discovered: Exploring them with HTR will be a big boost to historical research.”



Thank you, Günter, for talking to us!



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="329" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-1024x329.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31895" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-1024x329.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-300x96.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-768x247.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-1536x493.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-18x6.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc-600x193.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tuc.jpg 1900w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Transkribus would be nothing without its community. Transkribus User Conference 2022</figcaption></figure>

A Short History of Transkribus with Günter Mühlberger

If you regularly work with German historical documents then there are three types of German script that you are probably very familiar with: Fraktur, Kurrent, and Sütterlin. These scripts were used from the 16th century right up until the Second World War, covering several centuries of German and Central European history. However, nowadays, they are almost impossible to read for the untrained eye, making transcribing these kinds of documents a long and time-consuming process.



Thankfully, technology can now speed things up. Platforms such as Transkribus use AI models to recognise Fraktur, Kurrent, Sütterlin, and other scripts, and automatically create a digital version of the text. These digital versions can then be easily searched for certain words or phrases and easily shared with colleagues and the general public.



If you are new to using Transkribus to read historical documents in German, this post will introduce you to these three key scripts and show you three AI models that are ideal for transcribing them.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-fraktur">What is Fraktur?</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="640" height="479" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fraktur.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31860" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fraktur.jpg 640w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fraktur-300x225.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fraktur-16x12.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fraktur-600x449.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></figure>



The Fraktur font was used widely in German print from the early 16th century until it was outlawed by the Nazi Party in 1941. A form of black letter typeface, Fraktur letters are angular, rather than curved, and so it is often known in German as &#8220;gebrochene Schrift&#8220;, or &#8220;broken script&#8221;. Fraktur typefaces also often contain ligatures, most of which have their roots in German cursive handwriting.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-is-it-different-to-kurrent">How is it different to Kurrent?</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="460" height="180" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent_Fraktur.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31861" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent_Fraktur.jpg 460w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent_Fraktur-300x117.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent_Fraktur-18x7.jpg 18w" sizes="(max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px" /></figure>



In contrast to Fraktur, the &#8220;Kurrentschrift&#8220;, as it is known in German, is a type of handwritten script. It was also developed in the early 16th century and was then used up until the beginning of the 20th century when it was replaced by the newly developed Sütterlin script (see below). Until then, it was the standard handwriting that was taught in schools throughout Germany.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-and-what-is-sutterlin">And what is Sütterlin?</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="640" height="255" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Sutterlin.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31862" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Sutterlin.png 640w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Sutterlin-300x120.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Sutterlin-18x7.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Sutterlin-600x239.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></figure>



As mentioned, the Sütterlin script was another type of German handwriting and was the successor to the Kurrent script. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and Culture decided it was time to update Kurrent with a form of handwriting that was easier to read. In 1911, they commissioned designer Ludwig Sütterlin to create such a script, which he gladly did. The Sütterlin script was first introduced into Berlin schools in 1914 and soon spread to become the dominant handwritten script throughout Germany. You can find out more information on <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_S%C3%BCtterlin">Ludwig Sütterlin&#8217;s Wikipedia page</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-ai-models-for-reading-fraktur-kurrent-and-sutterlin">3 AI models for reading Fraktur, Kurrent and Sütterlin</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transkribus-german-handwriting-m1">Transkribus German Handwriting M1</h3>



If there is one model that is useful for documents written in Kurrent and/or Sütterlin, it is this one. Trained with a whopping 3,610,922 words from a very diverse range of handwritten manuscripts, Transkribus German Handwriting M1 is able to transcribe almost any handwritten document with relative accuracy and without extra training. In addition to the Kurrent and Sütterlin documents, the training data also included some German-language documents written in Latin script, making it ideal for manuscripts containing multiple types of handwriting. For such a diverse model, it has a low CER of just 4.7%.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/transkribus-german-handwriting-m1/">Go to model</a>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-german-fraktur-19th-20th-centuries">German Fraktur 19th-20th Centuries</h3>



This AI model focuses on a particular type of Fraktur text: documents written in the 19th and 20th centuries. Developed by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://onb.ac.at/">Austrian National Library</a> and the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.newseye.eu/">Newseye</a> project, the model is based on 442,121 words from a wide variety of historical newspapers and publications. It also has a CER of just 1%, outperforming most standard OCR engines with these types of documents. However, please note that the model was trained exclusively on German-language documents, making it less suitable for Swedish or Finnish Fraktur, for example.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/german-fraktur-19th-20th-century/">Go to model</a>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-german-kurrent-17th-18th-centuries">German Kurrent 17th-18th Centuries</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="640" height="444" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31863" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent-1.jpg 640w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent-1-300x208.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent-1-18x12.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Kurrent-1-600x416.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></figure>



This Transkribus Kurrent model is what we sometimes call a &#8220;super model&#8221;: it is based on 1,840,000 words from a diverse set of documents, including council minutes of the Pomeranian government of Stralsund, the assessor votes of the Wismar High Court and various private letter collections. It was developed by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.uni-greifswald.de/">University of Greifswald, </a>has a CER of 5.5% and is suitable for transcribing all manner of Kurrent documents from the 17th and 18th centuries.



→ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/model/german-kurrent-17th-18th-century/">Go to model</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-i-use-a-public-ai-model-with-transkribus">How do I use a public AI model with Transkribus?</h2>



Transkribus’ transcriptions are based on AI models. Each model has been trained to read a specific type of handwritten or printed text in a certain language, and often a certain time period or genre too.



If you want to transcribe a document with Transkribus, you first need to upload a scan of the document and then you choose a model. There are currently 94 public models available, which are all completely free to use. Transkribus will take the information stored in that model and apply it to your document, creating an instant transcription.



But what if there isn’t a model that is suitable for the text in your documents? Then you also have the chance to train your own. To do this, you need a series of pre-transcribed documents, collectively known as “Ground Truth”. The more ground-truth data you use to train your model, the more information it will contain and the more accurate it will be when transcribing new documents. To save time, many people use a public model as the base for their custom model and then fine-tune it with further Ground Truth.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-for-more-information-about-models-and-how-to-train-them-check-out-our-how-to-guides">For more information about models and how to train them, check out our <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/resources/how-to-guides/">How-to Guides</a>.</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-upload-a-document-and-give-transkribus-a-try">Upload a document and give Transkribus a try:</h3>




<div id="t-ai-app" data-embed="1" data-lang="en">
 <script src="https://transkribus.ai/t-ai-inline.js"></script>
</div>

3 AI Models For Transcribing German Text In Fraktur, Kurrent and Sütterlin

Citizen science, community science, crowdsourcing science, volunteer monitoring — however you want to call it, this type of scientific research always centres around one basic principle: the data collection is done not by professional scientists but by members of the public. These &#8220;citizen scientists&#8221; willingly give up their free time to help collect and collate data for research projects, making it possible to process a much larger amount of data than would normally be possible.



The Transkribus platform has been in several high-profile citizen science projects, in which volunteers have transcribed or corrected transcriptions of various types of historical documents. So in this post, we&#8217;re going to take a closer look at what citizen science is and how you can set up your own citizen science project with Transkribus.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-basic-idea-of-citizen-science">The basic idea of citizen science</h2>



As we said in the introduction, a citizen science project is one in which volunteers are (at least partly) responsible for collecting data. This could be anything from <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/hedgehog-survey">counting wildlife</a> in the garden, <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://exoplanets.astro.yale.edu/science/citizenscience.php">discovering planets</a> in images of outer space, or <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.noonsite.com/sailors-turned-scientists-be-a-part-of-the-worlds-biggest-plankton-survey/">measuring levels of phytoplankton</a> while sailing at sea. The data collected is then verified and analysed by professional scientists.



Such projects often involve hundreds and sometimes thousands of volunteers, enabling researchers to collect a much wider range of data than would be possible without this public participation. Another benefit of citizen science projects is their cost effectiveness. Volunteers usually give up their time and resources for free, making it possible to collect a lot of data at minimal cost.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-1024x683.png" alt="Many citizen science projects are based in the fields of biology and ecology. © EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA" class="wp-image-31654" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-1024x683.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-300x200.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-768x512.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-600x400.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Many citizen science projects are based in the fields of biology and ecology. © EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-importance-of-technology-in-citizen-science">The importance of technology in citizen science</h2>



Technology has revolutionised citizen science projects. Previously, a citizen scientist would have to log everything on paper and send it in, whereas now they can input their findings into apps or similar tools. This is not only less time consuming for volunteers but also allows researchers to receive data from around the world in real-time and carry out the data analysis on a constant basis.



Using technology in citizen science projects also helps to build a sense of community. It makes it possible for citizen scientists working on a project to connect with each other and share experiences. Some citizen science projects also incorporate leaderboards or other competitive elements into their apps, so that volunteers can compare their data collection activities with others and see who has collected the most data, or collected it the fastest etc. This sense of competition often helps citizen scientists to stay engaged in the project, resulting in more data for the professional scientists.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-data-quality-is-citizen-science-reliable">Data quality: is citizen science reliable?</h2>



This is usually one of the first questions people have about citizen science. If the volunteers are collecting data without any supervision (and often no qualifications or hands on experience in scientific work), how can we make sure that the data they collect is reliable?



Firstly, there have been several studies (such as <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eet.1975#:~:text=In%20the%20analysis%2C%20we%20measured,a%20reliable%20source%20for%20researchers.">this one</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.694258/full">this one</a>, and <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2021/05/25/citizen-science-up-to-97-accurate-when-it-comes-to-identifying-wildlife-study/?sh=56b6df9746a9">this one</a>) that have quantitatively shown that the data collected by citizen scientists is accurate enough to be used in the scientific process. These studies do stress, however, that the design of the project is key to its success. For example, the data collected should be checked by either a professional scientist or by many other citizen scientists. This could involve multiple volunteers reviewing the same photo or proofreading the same transcription. Training citizen scientists properly at the start of the project is also very important for generating accurate data, particularly if volunteers have never been involved in such projects.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-1024x683.png" alt="Technology like apps have revolutionised citizen science. © Marek Levak" class="wp-image-31653" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-1024x683.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-300x200.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-768x512.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02-600x400.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Technology like apps have revolutionised citizen science. © Marek Levak</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-is-citizen-science-used-in-digital-humanities">How is citizen science used in digital humanities?</h2>



As you may have realised from the types of projects mentioned in this post, citizen science has traditionally been used mainly in the fields of biology and ecology. But many of the more recent studies have taken place in digital humanities — the study of digital technologies and their implementation in the humanities. Many digital humanities projects involve creating digital versions of paper sources, such as books, manuscripts, and records.



There are several reasons why the scientific community is keen to digitise these kinds of sources. Firstly, it makes it easier to find relevant information within them. Many sources are hundreds or thousands of pages long, and finding the couple of pages relevant to your research question can be a time-consuming task. However, a digital version can be searched for keywords in a matter of seconds, saving valuable research time.



Digital versions can also be enriched much more easily than non-digital versions. Researchers can tag certain words or phrases to provide additional information about the topic, or to highlight particular information within the source. This not only makes the digital version more interesting for readers but it can also aid collaboration between researchers. Each researcher can enrich the text with their own interpretations or knowledge and in doing so, share it with other researchers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-citizen-scientists-help-with-digitising-sources">How do citizen scientists help with digitising sources?</h2>



Citizen scientists play a vital role in this digitisation process, both in creating digital version and in enriching them. The first thing to do when digitising a paper source is to transcribe it. Sometimes, this is done manually by volunteers skilled in the language and handwriting used in the document, who read the paper document and type the words into a computer programme.



However, manual transcription is quite time consuming so more and more citizen science projects are starting to speed things up with transcription platforms such as Transkribus. Transkribus uses AI to create automatic transcriptions of handwritten documents, which citizen scientists can then proofread. It takes much less time for a citizen scientist to proofread an automatic transcription than it does to create a manual transcription from scratch. Because of this, Transkribus allows citizen scientists to process many more documents than would be possible manually.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-1024x683.png" alt="Citizen scientists can help to create digital versions of old documents. © Pixabay" class="wp-image-31652" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-1024x683.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-300x200.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-768x512.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-18x12.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cb954900-b692-4c3f-9b39-2b5e6712a69d-600x400.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Citizen scientists can help to create digital versions of old documents. © Pixabay</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-kind-of-citizen-science-projects-are-there">What kind of citizen science projects are there?</h2>



Transkribus has been used in many different citizen science projects in digital humanities. Here are two good examples.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-europeana-transcribathon">Europeana Transcribathon</h3>



The <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.europeana.eu/en">Europeana project</a> is an initiative funded by the European Union. It aims to digitise items of cultural heritage from museums, archives, and libraries across Europe and create a fully-accessible online collection. Many of those artefacts are handwritten sources, which are transcribed by citizen scientists via the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/">Transcribathon platform</a>.



Previously, Transcribathon only allowed volunteers to transcribe documents manually. But in 2021, Europeana and Transkribus collaborated on a new version of the platform, which would generate automatic transcriptions of the documents. These could then be proofread by the citizen scientists working on the project.



You can find out more information about the collaboration in <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/">this blog post</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-retrodigitalisering">RetroDigitalisering</h3>



Led by the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://stadsarkiv.aarhus.dk/">Aarhus City Archives</a> in Denmark, the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.retrodigitalisering.dk/om/">RetroDigitaliserung</a> project focuses on the digitalisation of sources written in old Gothic handwriting, which can be very difficult to read. The project is a collaboration between many small Danish archives, that would otherwise lack the resources to organise a project of this scale alone.



RetroDigitaliserung trains citizen scientists, the majority of who are already of retirement age, to transcribe sources using Transkribus. To do this, they organise workshops around the country and create online resources, teaching the volunteers how to use the software. They have also worked with history students at the University of Aarhus. As the volunteers complete transcriptions, these are published on the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.retrodigitalisering.dk/protokoller/transskriberede-protokoller/">project website</a>, making them accessible to everyone.



Anette Larner of the RetroDigitaliserung project recently did a wonderful presentation about the project, which you can find <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://youtu.be/4eisevgwJGY">on YouTube</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="448" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-1024x448.png" alt="The transcription interface of the Europeana Transcribathon project. © Europeana Transcribathon" class="wp-image-31651" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-1024x448.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-300x131.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-768x336.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-1536x671.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-18x8.png 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c-600x262.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5f988045-5863-471d-8fc9-0c1843e6713c.png 1892w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The transcription interface of the Europeana Transcribathon project. © Europeana Transcribathon</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-can-i-set-up-my-own-citizen-science-project-with-transkribus">How can I set up my own citizen science project with Transkribus?</h2>



Transkribus is ideal for citizen science projects in digital humanities. The platform allows many different people to work on the same documents or collections, making it easy to combine with citizen science methods.



The first step is to learn how Transkribus works yourself. Having a good knowledge of the platform will help you to set up the project in the most efficient way and solve any problems that the volunteers are having. If you&#8217;ve never used Transkribus before, there are plenty of <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/resources/how-to-guides/">how-to guides</a> on our website, as well as <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7UbQtd4qlhJu68svdy7g7cX7-_Unt3Nb">video tutorials</a> on YouTube.



Once you have some experience in Transkribus, you can set up a citizen science project. To do this, all the documents that need transcribing should be uploaded to Transkribus and organised into a collection. This collection can then be shared with the volunteers. Each citizen scientist also needs their own Transkribus account, so that they can view the collection that has been shared with them.



The volunteers can then either create their own manual transcriptions of the documents or proofread the automatic transcriptions created by Transkribus. If you are training your own model for the project, you will first need to provide a certain number of manual transcriptions, known as &#8220;Ground Truths&#8221; (you can find out more about Ground Truths and the training process in this <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/howto/how-to-train-a-handwritten-text-recognition-model-in-transkribus/">how-to guide</a>). These can also be transcribed by citizen scientists.



If you need to train your citizen scientists to read a certain type of handwriting before they start work on the actual transcriptions, we can also recommend the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://transkribus.eu/r/learn/">Transkribus Learn</a> platform. Transkribus Learn teaches people how to read many older styles of handwriting through a series of quizzes, which become progressively harder as time goes on. You can also add your own documents to the platform and train your volunteers in the specific handwriting used in your project.

What is citizen science?

“I want to organise a Transkribus workshop but I don’t know where to start. Could you give me some advice?” This is a common question we get at READ-COOP. Learning to digitise historical documents can be a challenge for students, colleagues and volunteers in citizen science projects, and a workshop is a great way to help them get to grips with the process.



But organising a workshop is easier said than done. Which topics should be covered? What format should the workshop take? How interactive should it be?



To help answer these questions, we sat down with researcher Jan Odstrčilík from the Institute for Medieval Studies at the <a href="https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/1/austrian-academy-of-sciences">Austrian Academy of Sciences</a>. In the winter semester of 2022, Jan brought together a group of colleagues from all over Europe and the US to organise the institute’s first HTR Winter School. This multi-day workshop was designed to give students all the skills they need to digitise historical documents, using both Transkribus and various other HTR tools.



In this post, Jan shares his recipe for organising a successful Transkribus workshop as well as some vital tips for organising a similar event.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-big-idea">The big idea</h2>



Like many big ideas, the inspiration to organise an HTR Winter School came as a result of collaboration. Jan was already working with Helmut Reimitz from <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/">Princeton University</a> on a model for medieval scripts when the pair came across Tim Geelhaar from the <a href="https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/">University of Bielefeld</a>, who was creating a model for Carolingian minuscule with some pretty good results.&nbsp;



“We started to have discussions and to cooperate. We noticed interesting and different challenges for the Carolingian minuscule and the late medieval Latin, and realised how useful it could be to organise some type of a course.” With that, the idea for the winter school was born.&nbsp;



The team was then joined by highly experienced <a href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/tobias-hodel/">Tobias Hodel</a> from the <a href="https://www.unibe.ch/index_eng.html">University of Bern. </a>There were also co-organisers from the <a href="https://www.univie.ac.at/en/">University of Vienna</a> and the <a href="https://www.avcr.cz/en/">Czech Academy of Sciences</a> in Prague,<a href="https://www.unibe.ch/index_eng.html"> </a>making it possible to create a workshop with four different focus points: Carolingian minuscule, Late Medieval Latin, Medieval Germanand Medieval Czech (see <a href="https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/imafo/read/discovering-the-power-of-ai-for-reading-medieval-manuscripts-htr-winter-school-2022">the list of all organizers</a>) .While the workshop was designed with PhD students in mind, the team decided to open it up to anybody who wanted to learn about handwritten text recognition of medieval manuscripts, resulting in quite a diverse range of participants.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="485" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-1024x485.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31610" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-1024x485.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-300x142.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-768x363.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-1536x727.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-2048x969.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-18x9.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_125309-600x284.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The participants of the HTR Winter School came from many countries and disciplines. © Jan Odstrčilík</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Choosing the format</h2>



The next step was to decide how long the event should be. “Most workshops that I have experienced are strictly time-limited to a couple of hours and thus only allow a brief introduction,” Jan explained. “We wanted to offer a comprehensive experience: a mix where participants could not only learn the basics of Transkribus but where they could work on specific manuscripts, inspect them, discuss them, transcribe them, train models and then — at the end — make the results public.”&nbsp;



“But this requires time, so we decided to go for four virtual meetings every two to three weeks, which we concluded with a workshop in Vienna. This provided the participants enough time to absorb all the new information, as well as time to transcribe the necessary pages for training between individual meetings.”



The team decided to cover a diverse range of topics during the workshop, to give the participants comprehensive knowledge of HTR as a whole. “The virtual meetings focused closely on handwritten text recognition, including both theory and technical aspects. We followed that with the basics of the Transkribus program that were gradually deepened with new information (advanced layout, tags, training of the models, etc.) at each subsequent virtual meeting.”



There were several reasons behind the choice to use Transkribus as the main HTR platform for the workshop. “Firstly, Transkribus is currently the most accessible platform for independent researchers and small teams: anybody can use it regardless of the performance of their computer and without the need for any server. Moreover, the user community around Transkribus is very active and supportive, which was from our viewpoint a major factor.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="485" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-1024x485.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31609" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-1024x485.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-300x142.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-768x363.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-1536x727.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-2048x969.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-18x9.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221221_092018-600x284.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>A session at the Winter School in full swing. © Jan Odstrčilík</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Learning through doing</h2>



Right from the start, it was clear that the HTR Winter School should be as interactive as possible. The team wanted to give the students the chance to work on manuscripts in exactly the same way as they would in a real research environment.&nbsp;



“We wanted to give the students a common goal: Each of the four groups worked on selected manuscripts and had to collectively decide on the best methodology for the preparation of the models. We reserved part of every virtual meeting for group work. Then during the in-person workshop in Vienna,&nbsp; participants learnt how to use <a href="https://teipublisher.com/index.html">TEI-Publisher</a> to display editions and they published the Ground Truths using <a href="https://zenodo.org/">Zenodo</a> and <a href="https://htr-united.github.io/">HTR United</a>.”



Despite the focus on digital technology, it was important for the team that the participants also spent time with original manuscripts in physical form. “Although we mainly dealt with computer tools, the material world is still irreplaceable. That&#8217;s why we visited the <a href="https://www.onb.ac.at/en/">Austrian National Library</a> so that participants could see the manuscripts they had been working with until then only in a digital form. There is still something magical and deeply affecting in the ability to look and touch these objects. You could observe the immense excitement in the group.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="485" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-1024x485.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31608" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-1024x485.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-300x142.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-768x363.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-1536x727.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-2048x969.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-18x9.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20221220_141134-600x284.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Viewing the manuscripts at the Austrian National Library. © Jan Odstrčilík</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The end result</h2>



But of course, the big question is: how did it all go? According to the students, very well. “Based on our survey after the workshop, the participants appreciated the hybrid format as well as the different teams and the diverse composition of participants. They also liked the connection between the theory and practice and the ability to see manuscripts in person.”



The hybrid format, mixing virtual sessions with an in-person workshop, was very popular with the organisational team, too. “This kind of format is demanding but rewarding. Both the participants and we as organisers learned a lot.”



For Jan though, one of the highlights came right at the end of the course, when the different groups presented the results of their work throughout the winter school. “Each of the teams chose a slightly different approach and it was great to see what everybody achieved.”



“Our experience from the workshop in Vienna is summarized by the video made by one of our participants, Giuseppe Paternicò.”



<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/17HQSGCbeHga-UqLUPzsHVwkWV0VmDmlq/preview" width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>



© Giuseppe Paternico



Jan’s tips for organising your own Transkribus workshop



Despite the success of the event, there was something Jan and his team would do differently next time. “Even with a lot of time in the schedule, we still ran short of it. This was especially apparent in the in-person workshop where we wanted students to learn how to publish their transcriptions and Ground Truths. We succeeded thanks to Tobias Hodel, who took care of this part, but it was a little bit in a hurry. Those things are simply very time-consuming and so it is necessary to reserve enough time for this last step.”



Jan also had one final tip for anyone organising a workshop involving a lot of digital tools. “It was great and necessary to have a dedicated person (in our case, Leon Pürstinger) who took care of all the digital stuff, like Zoom and the recordings.”



Thanks, Jan, for talking to us and congratulations on the successful event!

How to organise a successful Transkribus workshop: Jan Odstrčilík

As one of the world’s largest countries, Russia is also one of the most studied. Its turbulent history and influence on world politics make it the focus of many research projects, which often use historical documents — such as local registers, birth records or even personal diaries — as their primary sources.&nbsp;



In times gone by, deciphering the old Cyrillic handwriting or print within them used to be a time-consuming challenge requiring years of training. But AI has changed this. Using AI text recognition technology such as Transkribus, researchers can now simply run a scan of the document through the software and get an instant, automatic transcription. And as we all know, the less time we have to spend transcribing, the more time we have for the more satisfying parts of historical research.



If you work with historical documents in Russian, here are three public AI models that you can use with Transkribus to get instant transcriptions of your texts.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Russian Generic Handwriting 2</h2>



If you have a mix of documents from different genres and time periods, then this is probably the best model to start with. Based on earlier models from the <a href="https://www.ra.ee/en/">Estonian State Archives</a> and the <a href="https://www.slm.uni-hamburg.de/inel.html">INEL project</a> in Hamburg, as well as the Russian Civil Records model (see below) and the <a href="https://eusp.org/en/prozhito/corpus">Prozhito database</a>, it encompasses a wide range of Ground Truths mostly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.&nbsp;



With a CER of 5.8%, it is capable of giving fairly accurate transcriptions for a wide variety of documents and is an excellent starting point for training your own model.&nbsp;



→ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/russian-generic-handwriting/">Go to model</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-russian-civil-records">Russian Civil Records&nbsp;</h2>



This interesting model was created by the <a href="https://ldvdf.org/">L’Dor V’Dor Foundation</a>, who preserve Jewish historical records from around the world. They took handwritten civil records from Congress Poland, Ukraine and Russia from 1914 to 1968 as their Ground Truths, creating a model with a CER of 7.3%.



The model works particularly well with handwritten records from Congress Poland.



→ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/russian-civil-records-late-xix-cent/">Go to model</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Russian Handwriting Early 20th Century</h2>



This model is ideal for using with pre-form Cyrillic documents. It was trained on bilingual Evenki/Russian manuscripts by Russian ethnographer and linguist Konstantin M. Rychkov, who collected various pieces of cultural information from the Evenki culture and translated them into Russian.&nbsp;



The Ground Truth consisted of 581 pages from the Rychkov archive dating from 1911-1913, and it has a CER of 4.4%. The model was also created by the <a href="https://www.slm.uni-hamburg.de/inel.html">INEL project</a> at the University of Hamburg.



→ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/russian-handwriting-early-20th-century/">Go to model</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-russian-print-18th-century-v-okorokov-s-printing-house">Russian Print 18th Century (V. Okorokov’s Printing House)</h2>



Created at the <a href="https://eusp.org/en">European University in St Petersburg</a>, this model was based on a series of scientific papers published by V. Okorokov’s Printing House at Moscow State University. The papers were all printed in Russian, with some scientific terms given in Latin script.



The CER on the validation set is just 0.6% and the model shows good results on printed texts from other publishing houses of the era.&nbsp;



→ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/russian-print-of-the-18-c-v-okorokovs-printing-house/">Go to model</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Russian Print 18th Century</h2>



This more recent print model is based on Ground Truths from a wider variety of publishing houses operating in the 18th century, including those at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg and the Imperial Moscow University. It was developed as part of a student project at <a href="https://www.hse.ru/en/">HSE University</a>.&nbsp;



With a CER of 2.4%, it gives good results on Russian-language texts, but it does not recognise other languages that may appear in the text.



→ <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/russian-print-xviii-cent/">Go to model</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How do I use a public AI model?</h2>



Transkribus’ transcriptions are based on AI models. Each model has been trained to read a specific type of handwritten or printed text in a certain language, and often a certain time period or genre too.&nbsp;



If you want to transcribe a document with Transkribus, you first need to upload a scan of the document and then you choose a model. There are currently 94 public models available, which are all completely free to use. Transkribus will take the information stored in that model and apply it to your document, creating an instant transcription.



But what if there isn’t a model that is suitable for the text in your documents? Then you also have the chance to train your own. To do this, you need a series of pre-transcribed documents known as “Ground Truths”. The more Ground Truths you use to train your model, the more information it will contain and the more accurate it will be when transcribing new documents. To save time, many people use a public model as the base for their custom model and then fine-tune it with further Ground Truths. For more information about models and how to train them, check out our <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/resources/how-to-guides/">How-to Guides</a>.

5 AI Models For Transcribing Old Russian Handwriting And Printed Russian Texts

Historical documents can be an amazing window into the past, but if you can&#8217;t read the handwriting, they can also be frustratingly inaccessible. That&#8217;s where Transkribus Learn comes in.



<a href="https://beta.transkribus.eu/learn/learndesk">Transkribus Learn</a> is a new tool for learning how to read old handwriting. Whether you&#8217;re a history student, an amateur genealogist, or just curious about reading historical documents, Transkribus Learn is the perfect tool for you. We would also like to say thank you to the <a href="https://www.uni-greifswald.de/">University of Greifswald</a>, who were our partners in the project.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe title="Transkribus Learn: A Tool for Learning How to Read Old Handwriting" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sU6cx6jH7wE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



With Transkribus Learn, you can learn how to read old handwriting, one exercise at a time. The platform will show you a line of handwritten text with one word highlighted. All you need to do is read the word and type it into the box. Transkribus Learn will then tell you if you are correct or not. You can create your own exercises or try out public ones based on real historical manuscripts. And once you have finished an exercise, you can compare your results with other users to see how you stack up.



Transkribus Learn is more than just a tool for learning how to read old handwriting. It&#8217;s also a great way to practice and improve your skills. And even if you&#8217;re not interested in learning how to read old handwriting yourself, our main<a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/?sc=Transkribus"> Transkribus platform</a> has you covered. The platform includes advanced automatic handwriting recognition capabilities, so you can still access the text of historical documents even if you don&#8217;t know how to read the handwriting yourself.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="468" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-1024x468.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31272" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-1024x468.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-300x137.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-768x351.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-1536x702.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-2048x936.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/transkribus-learn-600x274.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



So whether you want to learn how to read old handwriting or just want to access the text of historical documents, Transkribus has something to offer. Give Transkribus Learn a try and start learning how to read old handwriting, or take advantage of the platform&#8217;s automatic handwriting recognition capabilities to quickly decipher the text in historical documents. You&#8217;ll be amazed at the insights and stories that you can uncover once you can read those mysterious old documents! Transkribus Learn is now available on our <a href="https://beta.transkribus.eu/">public beta</a>.

Try out the new Transkribus Learn: A Tool for Learning How to Read Old Handwriting

Cursive handwriting has a rich history. The first people to write cursive letters were the ancient Romans, who used a form of cursive writing called &#8220;scriptura continua&#8221; for speed and efficiency. Over the centuries, handwriting has evolved and changed, with each era having its own distinctive style. However, despite these changes, one thing has remained constant: it is a challenge to read cursive writing.



Cursive reading was once a labour-intensive task that required a great deal of skill and expertise. Scholars and historians would spend countless hours poring over old historical documents, trying to learn cursive writing. This process was time-consuming and frustrating and often yielded few results.



However, with the advent of AI-powered handwriting recognition technology, reading cursive letters has become a much easier and more efficient process. These advanced technologies can quickly and accurately interpret historical documents, handwritten letters and any other type of cursive script, making it possible to uncover the hidden stories and insights that these sources contain.



In this post, we will explore the history of cursive handwriting and the challenges of reading historical documents. We will also look at the revolutionary impact of AI-powered handwriting recognition technology, and how it is making it possible to unlock the secrets of the past like never before. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-read-cursive-handwriting-without-technology">How to read cursive handwriting without technology</h2>



Learning to read old handwriting without the help of technology is quite a slow process, and requires a lot of patience. The best strategy is to start small. Read a couple of documents for context—try to get the gist but you don’t have to understand every word. It can help to look for common words such as “the” or proper nouns like the names of places or people that you know will probably be mentioned in the document. There might also be common phrases such as “to whom it may concern” or “last will and testament”, which are perhaps easier to recognise.



Another useful strategy when learning to read old handwriting is to pay attention to the way the letters are formed. In cursive writing, the letters are joined together in a flowing manner, and the direction of the pen strokes can provide valuable clues about the letters being written. For example, the letter &#8220;e&#8221; is often written with a downward stroke, while the letter &#8220;t&#8221; is often written with an upward stroke.



By paying attention to the cursive shapes, you can begin to piece together the words and phrases in the document, even if you don&#8217;t recognize every letter.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-creating-a-key-for-cursive-letters"> Creating a key for cursive letters</h2>



Once you’ve identified a few words or phrases, create an alphabet key, showing how the writer writes each individual cursive letter. Most people go for a traditional table, with the cursive letters in one column and the printed letters in a column next to it. You can then use this key to transcribe the rest of the document, adding new letters as you go.



Manually transcribing cursive writing in this way is quite time-consuming at first but it does become easier as your eyes get used to the letters. Over time, you will naturally become quicker at reading handwriting style variations, particularly if the styles all come from the same time period or type of document. Reading old cursive writing is an art, and one that takes patience to develop.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-easy-way-to-learn-to-read-cursive-writing">The easy way to learn to read cursive writing</h2>



If you want to practice your transcription skills before embarking on a whole document, we recommend heading over to <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://transkribus.eu/r/learn/">Transkribus Learn</a>. This new platform helps you to train your eyes by providing you with a series of historical cursive samples, for example, old manuscripts or personal handwritten letters. The platform shows you a sample with a word missing, and you have to guess what the missing cursive word is. The more you get right, the more points you win, and the more you improve your ability to read old cursive script. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-read-old-handwriting-with-handwriting-recognition-technology">How to read old handwriting with handwriting recognition technology</h2>



Nowadays though, transcribing old handwriting doesn’t have to be a long and arduous process. In recent years, handwriting recognition technology—often known as HTR—has revolutionised the process. HTR platforms such as Transkribus use artificial intelligence to learn how to read the handwriting in historical material, just like a human would. They then use this knowledge to automatically transcribe large numbers of documents at a much faster rate than a human could ever achieve manually.&nbsp;



If you&#8217;ve heard of optical character recognition (OCR), then HTR is pretty similar. However, there is one key difference: OCR is only capable of accurately reading familiar printed letters. That is because there is a finite number of printed fonts in the world and so it is easier for a computer programme to learn how to read them all.



When it comes to styles of handwriting, there is an infinite number of possible styles, each individual to the person who wrote it. In addition, how a person writes in one situation (for example, on a form) might be very different to how they write in another situation (such as on a greeting card). HTR software has to be good at understanding these increasingly complex forms of writing, and therefore the technology behind it needs to be more sophisticated.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-reading-cursive-with-transkribus">Reading cursive with Transkribus</h2>



The quickest way to transcribe documents with Transkribus is to use a public AI model. These are like manuals programmed by people in the Transkribus community, which tell the platform how to read a certain type of cursive handwriting, for example, “<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/english-handwriting-18th-19th-century-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">English handwriting 18th-19th century</a>” or “<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/german-kurrent-and-sutterlin-17th-20th-century/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">German Kurrent</a>”. If there is a public model for the type of handwriting you want to decipher, great! You can simply select that model and Transkribus will use the information it contains to automatically transcribe the writing in your documents.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Try it out:</h3>




<div id="t-ai-app" data-embed="1" data-lang="en">
 <script src="https://transkribus.ai/t-ai-inline.js"></script>
</div>



If there isn’t a suitable public model for your particular handwriting, then you can train a custom model for the handwriting in your document. First, you need to provide some “Ground Truths”. These are historical documents that you have manually transcribed on Transkribus, or pre-transcribed documents that you have uploaded from another source. Your Ground Truths allow the software to learn which cursive letters represent which printed characters and create a model based on that information (a bit like the alphabet key in the example above).



The platform then uses this custom model to automatically transcribe other documents, and make educated guesses about letters it has never seen before. This way, Transkribus can accurately transcribe documents at the click of a button, no matter which language or handwriting they are written in.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-i-know-which-method-is-right-for-me">How do I know which method is right for me?</h2>



The best way is to try them both out! Transcribe a page of handwriting without technology and see how long it takes you. Then run it through Transkribus and see how much quicker it is.



The easiest way to do this is to use the <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://Transkribus.ai">Transkribus.ai</a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://transkribus.ai/"> widget</a>. This is the most basic version of Transkribus and is ideal for quickly understanding how the software works. You can simply upload a document, select the language and Transkribus should be able to give a rough transcription of the cursive letters. The Transkribus.ai widget works with very general public models, so you should expect some accuracy errors, but it is an excellent first look into HTR technology.



If you&#8217;re looking for a more accurate transcription, then it is worth trying the more sophisticated <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://lite.transkribus.eu/">Transkribus Lite</a>. To use Transkribus Lite, you need to set up an account and choose a suitable model for your documents. Alternatively, you can train a custom model for the cursive writing in your documents using the instructions above. Transkribus Lite takes a little more time to set up, however you will be rewarded with better accuracy and quicker transcriptions in the long run.



For more on getting started on Transkribus, you can also check out our helpful video: <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://youtu.be/pkPJa3vF6tA">https://youtu.be/pkPJa3vF6tA</a>

How to read cursive handwriting in historical documents

November 2022 was a milestone month in Transkribus history. After three years as part of a European cooperative, the platform finally reached 100,000 users! This means over 100,000 people around the world have signed up to use Transkribus to transcribe and enrich their historical documents and uncover a little bit of our written past along the way.



To celebrate this great achievement, we ran a <a href="https://readcoop.eu/100k-users/">competition on social media</a>, offering 10 Transkribus users the chance to win 10,000 credits each. All you had to do was share an image of your latest Transkribus material on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, and add a few words describing the project.



We had many fantastic entries, and 10 were selected at random as the final winners. These winning projects span several centuries of our written past, from the medieval period right up until 1945. Here’s an overview of all the projects and the lucky users behind them.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-20th-century">20th century</h2>



Our first winner is <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-verdult-11b072149/">Kathleen Verdult</a> from the <a href="https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/english?gclid=Cj0KCQiA7bucBhCeARIsAIOwr--iO4nXEK1q9TfCluOAbTcUlmE5hBTcVyyaw2slQrIfcxoSm0V4_88aAvMWEALw_wcB">Utrecht Archives</a>. This Dutch archive is currently using Transkribus to transcribe letters from Utrecht citizens who provided accommodation to Allied soldiers at the end of the Second World War and add metadata about all the names and addresses mentioned.&nbsp;



<iframe src="https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:7002946021743812608" height="890" width="504" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded post"></iframe>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">19th century</h2>



Four of the winning projects focus on documents from the 19th century. These include the <a href="https://twitter.com/DualchasCeilte">Decoding Hidden Heritages of Gaelic Narrative</a> project, who shared a beautiful story in Gaelic about a fieldworker who collected two deer. On the other side of the world in New Zealand, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/614090738935143/permalink/1835869853423886/">Vivienne L Cuff</a> is also carrying out a Transkribus project: a casebook of applications for poor relief in the city of Dunedin.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">One of our less demanding Transkribus projects are the Aarhus city directories from the 19th century. Where most of our efforts concerns handwritten text, it has also been necessary to produce a reliable model for printed Gothic text. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyTranskribusStory?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyTranskribusStory</a> <a href="https://t.co/AxaX3V9Iy7">pic.twitter.com/AxaX3V9Iy7</a>&mdash; Kristian. (@KPindstrup) <a href="https://twitter.com/KPindstrup/status/1598261416733339648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



Danish Transkribus user <a href="https://twitter.com/KPindstrup/status/1598261416733339648?s=20&amp;t=v1DtWglTNejxhsXsOvpNoA">Kristian Pindstrup</a> told us that he is currently working on Aarhus city directories from the 1800s, and has created models for both handwritten texts and Gothic printed texts in the process. And the final project from this time period comes from the <a href="https://twitter.com/OmilabOpenu/status/1595008301506379777?s=20&amp;t=4IKn8TFfJw8ANvLfHSlSNQ">OMILab</a> at the Open University of Israel, who are using 13 different periodicals in Hebrew to train a model for historical Hebrew print. They created an open workflow which migrates legacy segmentation data into the open page format before outputting the data as a TEI-XML encoded and enriched corpus. The team has also shared their open code on <a href="https://github.com/omilab/historical_press">GitHub</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">17th and 18th centuries</h2>



Transkribus is a great tool for students in many disciplines. Master’s student <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7003702213185257472-yzn7?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop">Esther M</a>. is using Transkribus to recognise handwritten documents from the 18th century and find an interesting untold story for her thesis. <a href="https://twitter.com/AriVesalainen/status/1594667500985528320?s=20&amp;t=fK-EfNFkjmXbpwHsuRQIIg">Ari Vesalainen</a> has already found the texts for his PhD thesis and is currently working on a model for a range of different handwritten documents, including David Hume’s “History of England” series.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Working with Transkribus and PyLaia to train to recognize texts from 18th century, especially David Hume&#39;s History of England editions. Model is far from perfect yet. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyTranskribusStory?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyTranskribusStory</a> <a href="https://t.co/bb3BUmeAgH">pic.twitter.com/bb3BUmeAgH</a>&mdash; Ari Vesalainen (@AriVesalainen) <a href="https://twitter.com/AriVesalainen/status/1594667500985528320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 21, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



At the <a href="https://twitter.com/ehcantwerp/status/1596075534982733824?s=20&amp;t=vE41GxZdgOqWURBYQyes_g">Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library</a>, the team are using Transkribus to digitise their historical newspapers and provide a full-text search for each publication. Right now, they are working on the &#8216;Antwerpsche Vrijdaaghsche Post-Tijdinghe&#8217; newspaper, which dates all the way back to 1695!



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">15th century and beyond</h2>



In general, the older the handwriting, the fewer people can read it. Creating a model for medieval manuscripts can be a time-consuming process, but one that saves a lot of time in the long run. <a href="https://twitter.com/leseexistenz/status/1597911043828654081?s=20&amp;t=12olZ4vyOTOvBxVHa_WLeg">Vera Schwarz</a> trained a model that not only transcribes Italian notarial registers from the late 15th century but automatically expands all the abbreviations too, making it easier to understand the content of the text.



But the oldest project in the Transkribus 100k Giveaway came from <a href="https://twitter.com/KlugsederRobert/status/1594661974029352960?s=20&amp;t=QHllXKQ6FPzmhEyHNkbGOQ">Robert Klugseder</a> at the <a href="https://www.alderspach.de/">Bavarian Cistercian Monastery of Aldersbach</a>. His team are currently transcribing a range of documents with Transkribus, including tradition and privilege books, charters, chronicles, and account books. By creating digital versions, the monastery can preserve their fragile medieval and early modern documents and make them accessible to everyone.



<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Indexing of medieval and early modern archival documents from the Bavarian Cistercian Monastery of Aldersbach. Tradition and privilege books, charters, chronicles and account books could be transcribed with the help of <a href="https://twitter.com/Transkribus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Transkribus</a>. <a href="https://t.co/1jzWRSLWPp">https://t.co/1jzWRSLWPp</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyTranskribusStory?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MyTranskribusStory</a> <a href="https://t.co/sOn10DCpJo">pic.twitter.com/sOn10DCpJo</a>&mdash; Robert Klugseder (@KlugsederRobert) <a href="https://twitter.com/KlugsederRobert/status/1594661974029352960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 21, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



Congratulations to all the winners in the 100k Giveaway!

Take a trip through our written past with the Transkribus 100k Giveaway winners

We are thrilled to announce that yesterday, we hit 100,000 users on the Transkribus platform! Even with our years-long highly motivated effort, advocacy, and dedication, this milestone would not have been possible without our passionate community. Over 25,000 new members have joined us this year alone—a clear indication of where the Transkribus family is  headed.



To show our appreciation, we want to give back to our amazing community. We are raffling off a whopping 100,000 credits. 10 users have the chance to win 10,000 credits each. All you need to do is share an image of the material you&#8217;re processing with Transkribus and say a couple of words about it on social media, and tag our account with the hashtag #MyTranskribusStory. 



We can&#8217;t wait to hear your stories and see how Transkribus has helped you in your work to unlock our written past. Thank you for being part of this journey with us- here&#8217;s to many more years of success!



Our accounts: <a href="https://twitter.com/Transkribus">@Transkribus</a> on Twitter, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/read-coop-sce/">READ-COOP SCE</a> on LinkedIn and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/transkribus">Transkribus</a> Platform on Facebook







Terms:



This contest ends on December 1st 2022. Every person that posts an image with the hashtag #MyTranskribusStory will have the chance to win one of ten 10,000 Transkribus credits that are only usable on the Transkribus platform and my not be sold or refunded. The winners will be chosen at random.

100,000+ people use Transkribus  (100k Giveaway)

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ever-had-trouble-reading-someone-else-s-handwriting">Ever had trouble reading someone else’s handwriting?&nbsp;</h2>



Well, it may reassure you to know that it’s not only humans that have this problem, but computers too. While computers have been able to recognise and transcribe printed text for decades, recognising handwritten texts has only been possible for the last few of years. The technology that does this is known as handwritten text recognition or HTR, and it is the foundation of the Transkribus software.&nbsp;



Handwriting recognition is a fascinating technology but it can be a bit complex to understand at the beginning. So if you are new to this new and unique technology, here is a quick introduction to what HTR is and what it does.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What is handwriting recognition or HTR?</h2>



Handwriting recognition is a type of technology that can be used to “read” the writing in images of handwritten documents. Let’s say you wrote an essay by hand back when you were at school and you now want to have that essay as digital text on your computer. With the right HTR software, you could take a photo of the essay, run it through the software and get that same essay as a digital text file, which can be downloaded and shared as necessary. This is the basic principle of handwriting recognition.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-1024x576.jpg" alt="Handwriting Recogntion " class="wp-image-29726" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1-600x338.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr-1.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



We should also be clear on the terminology here. The kind of handwriting recognition described above is known as “offline handwriting recognition”. That is because it involves images of text that has already been written. There is also “online handwriting recognition”. This is software that generates digital text from handwriting as you write it, usually with a tablet and stylus. As Transkribus was created to recognise the handwriting in historical documents that have already been written, it can only be used for offline handwriting recognition.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why do computers find handwritten text harder to recognise than printed text?</h2>



With printed texts, there is a finite number of fonts that can be used — 200,000 of them, in <a href="https://facts.net/fonts-facts/">fact</a>. And while this may seem like a lot, it does at least mean you can program software to read them all.



Handwriting is a different ball game. The 6.5 billion people on this planet who can write each have their own style of handwriting and no two styles are exactly the same. To make things more complicated, how someone writes on an official form might be very different to how they write in their own diary, for example. The infinite number of possibilities makes it also impossible to program software to read them all. Read more about the difference between optical character recognition (OCR) and handwriting recogntion in our <a href="https://readcoop.eu/insights/ocr-vs-htr/">insights blog</a>. 



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay controls loop preload="auto" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hwr.mp4"></video><figcaption>The variety of handwritings </figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How does handwriting recognition work?</h2>



So how does HTR technology recognise handwriting, if you can’t program it? Answer: HTR software doesn’t recognise handwriting, it learns to recognise handwriting. Over time, software like Transkribus uses AI and Deep Learning to learn how to read and transcribe different types of handwriting, just like a human would. To do this, you first need an AI model. This is like a giant digital mind that has learnt the shapes and characteristics of thousands of handwritten words, letters and even just symbols. Most importantly, the model can also make educated guesses about characters it hasn’t seen before. The software recognises the handwriting in the image and then uses the model’s knowledge to transcribe that handwriting into digital text. With the right model, you can achieve an almost perfect transcription at just the click of a button.&nbsp;



There are lots of <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/">public models</a> already available for Transkribus, covering different languages and types of handwriting such as German Kurrent, or English handwriting from the 18th and 19th centuries. But you can also create your own model. This is done by manually transcribing a certain number of documents, to train the “digital mind” to recognise the specific handwriting in your documents. You can then use this custom model to automatically transcribe the rest of your documents.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What do people use HTR technology for?</h2>



There are many jobs that involve being able to quickly read handwritten documents. For example, historians and other researchers use historical handwritten documents to learn about the past. They often want to create digital versions of the documents, so that they can more easily analyse the documents and search the whole collection for certain words or terms. HTR technology is perfect for this.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="772" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-1024x772.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29728" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-1024x772.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-300x226.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-768x579.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-1536x1158.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-2048x1544.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-16x12.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rses-600x452.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Handwritten collections are often shared online via the<a href="https://readcoop.eu/readsearch/"> read&amp;search </a>platform</figcaption></figure>



Archives and libraries are also places where HTR technology can be useful. Nowadays, archivists and librarians aim to offer digital versions of as many books and documents as possible. But manually transcribing the hundreds and thousands of volumes in a standard archive would take forever. Automatic transcription with HTR is a much quicker alternative, and makes it easier to publish all the documents online too.



But there are many other people who use HTR technology to make their lives easier: companies wanting to digitise their old files, developers wanting to incorporate handwriting recognition into custom software, hobby genealogists who want to read their family’s old records, the list is endless!



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Can I see an example of handwriting recognition in action?</h2>



If you want to see how handwriting recognition works, then simply upload a scanned image of handwritten text to the widget below, and see the technology in action. 



<iframe width="100%" height="600" src="https://transkribus.ai/?embed=1" frameborder="0"></iframe>

What is handwriting recognition and how does it work?

The latest version of Transkribus Lite is here and brings a number of new features. Here are the most important new features:&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-smart-search">Smart Search</h2>



From now on, you can simply tick a checkbox when you are starting a text recognition job to enhance the search experience in your documents. With Smart Search, Transkribus can be configured to store a large number of the possible words for each place in the document, and to make these available for searching. Thus it is possible to find search terms that would not be found with a regular full-text search that stores only one candidate per word. This feature comes in handy especially when searching for named entities, such as place and person names, because these are typically difficult to &#8220;learn&#8221; for Transkribus as they are relatively rare compared to &#8220;normal&#8221; words. The possible alternative words are identified using AI and thus selected in a smart way. If you choose to run text recognition with Smart Search switched on, this improved search experience will be available both in Transkribus itself and on your <a href="https://readcoop.eu/readsearch/">read&amp;search</a> website, should you have one. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="583" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-1024x583.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29579" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-1024x583.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-300x171.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-768x438.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-1536x875.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-2048x1167.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smart-search-600x342.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Smart Search at the text recognition dialogue</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The tag manager</h2>



With the new tag manager you can easily manage, view and search the tags in your collections. The edit mode lets you change existing tags, remove existing tags, and add new tags to your collection. The list mode displays all tags that you have used in your collection and the number of times that they have been used. With the tag search feature you can search your tags with ease. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="478" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-1024x478.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29580" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-1024x478.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-300x140.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-768x359.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-1536x717.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-2048x956.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/tag-manager-600x280.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The new tag manager</figcaption></figure>







<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Add relations to the layout of your documents</h2>



The layout mode of the document editor now allows you to create relations between layout elements. This way, you can connect related layout elements for further use cases. The relational data will also be incorporated into the XML of the document.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="477" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-1024x477.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29581" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-1024x477.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-300x140.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-768x357.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-1536x715.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-2048x953.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-18x8.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/layout-manager-600x279.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Adding relations in the layout editor</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Improved user interface</h2>



With this new release we have also put a strong focus on improving the user experience by making the user interface more simple and intuitive. Now you can easily distinguish between documents and single pages as the design of the document as well as page overview has been adapted to make the difference clear. Some additional changes to the sidebar, the top navigation as well as to a number of other, smaller elements will make working with Transkribus Lite more intuitive and easy. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29582" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-300x169.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-768x432.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface-600x338.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/new-interface.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>New layout of Documents and Pages</figcaption></figure>

Transkribus Lite 2.3. – New Features: Smart Search, Tag Manager, and Layout Relations

The latest addition to the long list of Transkribus public models comes from the <a href="https://www.arkivverket.no/en">National Archives of Norway</a>. Thanks to their efforts, not one, not two, but three new models for Norwegian (and also Danish) are now publicly available.Two of the models are for typewritten material: one for <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/danish-norwegian-typewritten-transcripts-1760-1842/">Danish-Norwegian typewritten transcripts</a> and the other for <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/norwegian-typewriting-1940-1945/">Norwegian typewriting</a> from 1940-1945. Both models have impressive CERs of less than 1%.&nbsp;The third of the three models, one could say the peak of the trident, is a handwriting model for <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/danish-norwegian-handwriting-1874-1891/">Danish &amp; Norwegian Handwriting</a> from 1874–1891. This model is based on partition protocols for Sunnhordland, Norway. This Norwegian trident is now available to anyone—you can try them out now on our website.

The Norwegian Trident &#8211; Three New Public Models For Norwegian (&#038; Danish)

By Joe Nockels, University of Edinburgh



As part of his PhD research at the University of Edinburgh and National Library of Scotland (NLS), Joe Nockels underwent a systematic review of how Trankribus was being mentioned in research from 2015-2020. A total of 381 papers were gathered from Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. Here are a few of the findings:



Published research mentioning Transkribus is international and growing.



There was a 235% increase in Transkribus research between 2017 and 2018, returning 39 and 92 works respectively. 2019 saw another increase in materials mentioning Transkribus, rising to 112. With the analysis ending in October 2020, understandably fewer works were, although the amount of research was still sizeable with 99 materials. Transkribus&#8217;s rise in mentions eludes to a shift in the collection and curatorial landscapes, with memory institutions opting for the digitisation and recognition of their materials en masse (Chassanoff 2013; Duff et al. 2004). It is a reasonable assertion to think that this has only increased during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, which inadvertently provided a window for archives and libraries to prioritise digital projects, delivering services through multiple channels for those without access to buildings.



English was the most common language of Transkribus research (67.98%, n = 259). Transkribus research appears more multilingual than the general content in Scopus; where 88.4% of results, 77% of art and humanities materials, appeared in English in 2013 (Van Weijen 2013). More recent studies have shown that the prevalence of Standard English is on the rise in scholarly research, irrespective of field, estimating that 98% of publications in science are written in English, causing researchers from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) countries to sound the alarm that their contributions are being inhibited (Flowerdew 2013; Ramirez-Castaneda 2020). We should remain mindful of this trend, although English materials mentioning Transkribus sits alongside works in Dutch, Spanish; Swedish, Bosnian, Russian, Norwegian, Polish, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian, Czech and even Maori, showcasing the diversity of those researching Transkribus, as well the broad array of their research.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="628" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-1024x628.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29368" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-1024x628.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-300x184.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-768x471.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-1536x943.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-2048x1257.jpg 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-18x12.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/map-transkribus-in-research-600x368.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Transkribus research (2015-2020) plotted using Digimap’s roam feature. Location markers identify the lead researchers’ affiliation. The Innsbruck server is located with a yellow pin.</figcaption></figure>







Plotting returned works geographically, we can see that materials mentioning Transkribus gravitate around the servers held at Innsbruck, with German institutions the most represented. That said, research avenues have opened up in West Asia particularly.



Members of the READ-COOP play a large role in publishing research using and mentioning Transkribus.



118 works (30.97%) came from READ-COOP institutions. This highlights that the COOP is becoming a strong space for like-minded institutions to feature Transkribus, presenting results and increasing its capabilities as a tool.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="551" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research-1024x551.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29369" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research-1024x551.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research-300x161.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research-768x413.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research-600x323.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/transkribus-in-research.jpg 1382w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Chart highlighting the research output of institutional READ-COOP members by number of publications.</figcaption></figure>







Transkribus is mainly mentioned in journal articles (42.87%, n = 163), conference papers (21.00%, n = 80) and policy documents (8.14%, n = 31). Although research using and mentioning the software appeared in greyer materials like book sections, undergraduate and postgraduate theses, reports, presentations, blog posts, magazines and video recordings. Out of the entire dataset, 71.13% of works were accessible online under an open copyright license (n= 271), replicating to an extent the atmosphere of collegiality and cooperation seen with the establishment of the shareholding model of the READ-COOP. This is a positive sign, enabling greater research to be done through the sharing of publications, models and methodologies.



Transkribus features primarily in archival and library science publications, while a broad range of disciplines are using HTR to a lesser extent such as: history, computer science, citizen science, law and education. This shows the wide applicability of the HTR tool, providing a host of useful tools at researchers&#8217; disposal: improving collection descriptions, information retrieval and the recognition of historical documents. Transkribus is useful regardless of users’ concept of data-driven methods. A librarian may want to use HTR not to produce full transcriptions but to keyword spot metadata across collections, improving access to historical materials. By contrast, individual researchers tend to use Transkribus to produce rich data that is ‘replete with enough specifics that they may operationalize that data in pursuit of their research goals’. In terms of the domain of computer science, research into Transkribus is more dependent on gaining predictable and regularised results (such as a certain level of character/word error rate) (Lincoln 2017, p 30). Transkribus is flexible enough to meet all these specific needs.



Since 2017 especially, research into Transkribus has been undertaken in a variety of fields. While archival science, information science, and computer science remain the dominant disciplines, we found that work has been published across the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS). Fields that were represented in our corpus included religious studies, publishing, history, theatre studies, philosophy, management science, and medieval studies.



Taking all these findings into account, Transkribus appears to be as Thylstrup (2019) describes a ‘bottom-up’ mass digitization movement, made up of hundreds of simultaneous projects driven by motivated researchers. This provides a firm base for the READ-COOP, increasing the accuracy of Transkribus by supplying ground truth data and trained models. As Transkribus grows, more research will inevitably be produced and new rhythms will emerge in the approaches of researchers. Carrying out subsequent analyses of the literature will allow this to be tracked and understood. Through such a structure, the evidential value of user experiences with HTR can be harnessed and collected, helping to develop Transkribus in a sustainable and useful manner.



For the full paper see: <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10502-022-09397-0">https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10502-022-09397-0</a>



Chassanof A (2013) Historians and the use of primary source materials in the digital age. Am Arch 76:458–480. https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.76.2.lh76217m2m376n28



Duff W, Craig B, Cherry J (2004) Historians’ use of archival sources: promises and pitfalls of the digital age. Public Hist 26:1–10



Flowerdew J (2013) Some thoughts on English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) and related issues. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge



Lincoln M (2017) Ways of forgetting: the librarian, the historian, and the machine. In: Padilla T, Allen L, Frost H, Potvin S, Russey RE, Varner S (eds) Always already computational: library collections as data. Institute of Memory and Library Services, National Forum Positional Statements, pp 20–30. https://collectionsasdata.github.io. Accessed 20 Nov 2020



Ramirez-Castaneda V (2020) Disadvantages in preparing and publishing scientific papers caused by the dominance of the English language in Science: the case of Colombian researchers in biological sciences. Paper presented at PLoS One, Kyoto, 16 Sept 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone. 0238372



Thylstrup NB (2019) The politics of mass digitization. MIT Press, Cambridge



van Weijen D (2013) Publication languages in the arts &amp; humanities. Res Trends 32:1–10

Understanding the application of Transkribus in research

We are excited to launch our new “<a href="https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUvdeyvrj4uHNTSFv7JwVk6A0veTORATUaL">Ask Us Anything</a>” webinar series, where attendees can ask us about anything related to Transkribus, handwritten text recognition, transcribing and related topics. This webinar series provides an opportunity for dialogue and feedback that will help us to improve Transkribus and other related tools. We hope you&#8217;ll join us for this series and take advantage of this opportunity to ask us anything!



Join us on the 29th of June at 5 p.m. (CEST) for our Ask Us Anything webinar. This is your chance to get all your questions answered. Register now and we&#8217;ll see you on the 29th of June.



You can register for the webinar <a href="https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUvdeyvrj4uHNTSFv7JwVk6A0veTORATUaL">here</a>.

New Webinar: Ask Us Anything About Transkribus

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-new-sharing-feature">The new sharing feature</h2>



It might be a small button for a screen, but it is a great function for your work: The new sharing feature in <a href="https://lite.transkribus.eu">Transkribus Lite</a>. Want to quickly share a page you are working on with others? You no longer need to screenshot it, you can share it instead. With just two clicks, you can now share a page from Transkribus Lite with anyone, even if they’re not registered with Transkribus. The new sharing feature also gives you full control over your shared page so you can make it private again at any time. Try out the new feature and let us know what you think!


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="602" height="148" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29216" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_1.jpg 602w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_1-300x74.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_1-18x4.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_1-600x148.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px" /></figure></div>


A small button with a big impact: The new sharing button



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Improved navigation bar</h2>



With this new feature we have also improved the navigation bar in the single page view. Now you can quickly navigate between the three different modes (view-, text editing and layout editing mode). This new streamlined look&nbsp; makes it easier to focus on what is really important: Working on your documents.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Be in full control of your metadata</h2>



From now on you can also edit all the metadata of your documents and collections. Just open the edit mode via the context menu with the three dots and you can modify all the additional information for your documents and collections.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="602" height="307" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29217" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_2.jpg 602w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_2-300x153.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_2-18x9.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_2-600x306.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px" /></figure></div>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Use the new table view to master large collections</h2>



This new table view is ideal for collections containing large amounts of documents With a simple click, you can switch between the cards and table overview of your documents, allowing you to view the collection in the way that is easiest for you


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_3.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29218" width="602" height="211" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_3.jpg 602w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_3-300x105.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_3-18x6.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_3-600x210.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px" /></figure></div>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading">New: Work with structure types</h2>



If you want to work with structure types, Transkribus Lite has you covered. Using structural tags, you can now mark up the entire structure of your documents. It is also possible to&nbsp; set up and modify your structure types on a collection level in the collection overview, and assign different structure types to text regions simply by right clicking and assigning them in the layout editor.&nbsp;


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_4.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29219" width="602" height="163" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_4.jpg 602w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_4-300x81.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_4-18x5.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_4-600x162.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px" /></figure></div>

<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_5.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29220" width="602" height="211" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_5.jpg 602w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_5-300x105.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_5-18x6.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/lite22_5-600x210.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px" /></figure></div>

Transkribus Lite 2.2.: Sharing your work has just got easier 

Many people are surprised to learn that Transkribus is not run by a regular company, but by a cooperative: READ-COOP. That means that it is our members, not investors, that dictate how the organisation is run — after all, they are the people who use our technology every day to make the past accessible for everyone. Our READ-COOP members range from individuals with a passion for historical manuscripts to universities, research institutes, and libraries. However, in celebration of <a href="https://www.ica.org/en/events-and-resources/about-international-archives-day-and-international-archives-week">International Archives Day</a>, we would like to focus today on one particular section of our membership: archives. We are lucky to have several amazing archives as members of our cooperative, so let’s take a quick tour abroad to find out about the fascinating projects these archives carry out with Transkribus.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-nordic-and-baltic-countries">The Nordic and Baltic Countries</h3>



Birth registers, military records, court proceedings: national archives are literally mines of historical information about a country. Each archive is run by a team of people responsible for preserving these enlightening documents and making them accessible to the public. Nowadays, that means digitising them and creating an online database, and many archives have achieved this using READ-COOP technology.



National archives in the Nordic and Baltic countries that are members of READ-COOP include the <a href="https://kansallisarkisto.fi/en/frontpage">Kansallisarkisto </a>in Finland, the <a href="https://www.arkivverket.no/en">Arkivverket</a> in Norway, and the <a href="https://dkarkiver.dk/">Organisation of Danish Archives</a>. Part of our members are also the <a href="https://riksarkivet.se/startpage">Riksarkivet</a> in Sweden, as well as the <a href="https://www.ra.ee/en/">Rahvusarhiiv</a> neighbouring Estonia. All of these archives used <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus">Transkribus</a> to help digitise their vast collections of documents, and three — Sweden,Finland and Estonia — have also made their collections public via the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/readsearch/">read&amp;search</a> platform. That way, researchers and the public can search the entire archive and quickly find the information they need.



As part of the citizen science project <a href="https://www.retrodigitalisering.dk/about/">RETRO</a>, the Organisation of Danish Archives has also transcribed a large amount of material, mostly municipal documents. They have now made their text recognition model of <a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/danish-gothic-handwriting/">19th-century Danish Gothic handwriting</a> available to the public. Also in the Nordics, there is the archive of the <a href="https://www.sls.fi/en">Society of Swedish Literature in Finland</a>, who preserve and promote Swedish-Finnish culture.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-belgium-the-netherlands-and-luxembourg">Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg</h3>



In the Netherlands, it is common that individual cities and regions run archives of information about the area and the people who have lived there. Many of these city archives are members of READ-COOP, including <a href="https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/english">Utrecht</a>, <a href="https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/">Amsterdam</a>, <a href="https://noord-hollandsarchief.nl/">North Holland</a> and <a href="https://www.groningerarchieven.nl/">Groningen</a>. By converting their manuscripts into readable and searchable modern text with Transkribus, these Dutch archives have uncovered some fascinating new pieces of history, not to mention a <a href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/amsterdam-notary-archives-out-of-the-dark/">Rembrandt painting</a> no one even knew had existed!&nbsp;



Among the more recent members is the <a href="https://arch.arch.be/index.php?l=en">State Archives of Belgium</a>. Consisting of the National Archives in Brussels and many archival respositories throughout the country, the State Archives of Belgium decided to join READ-COOP with the common mission to make archives more accessible. Luxembourg may be one of the smallest countries in Europe, but they are also home to an impressively large archive: the <a href="https://anlux.public.lu/de.html">Archives Nationales de Luxembourg</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-germany-austria-and-switzerland">Germany, Austria, and Switzerland</h3>



The <a href="https://www.stockach.de/tourismus-kultur/de/kulturzentrum/stadtarchiv-1">City Archive of Stockach</a> in Germany also decided to become part of the READ-COOP and to work with Transkribus to recognise handwritten as well as printed documents. In the German-speaking world, however, it is not just governments or municipalities that run archives, but churches too. The diocese of <a href="https://www.bistum-passau.de/bistum-pfarreien/geschichte-archiv">Passau</a> in Germany and <a href="https://www.dasp.at/">St. Pölten</a> in Austria are both READ-COOP members and have extensive archives of church records dating back to the 16th century. In neighbouring Switzerland, there are two archives that are members of READ-COOP: the <a href="https://www.zh.ch/de/direktion-der-justiz-und-des-innern/staatsarchiv.html#342541443">State Archive in Zürich</a> and the <a href="https://www.stadtzug.ch/stadtarchiv">City Archive in Zug</a>. Along with preserving and digitising historical documents, these two archives also run a host of educational events and tours, including <a href="https://www.zh.ch/de/news-uebersicht/mitteilungen/2022/politik-staat/staatsarchiv/-transkribus--fuer-archive0.html">Transkribus workshops</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-italy">Italy</h3>



Our southernmost member in Europe is the <a href="http://www.fondazionebanconapoli.it/">Fondazione Banco di Napoli</a> in Naples, Italy. This vast archive holds financial records from various Neapolitan banks from the 16th century onwards, documenting the city’s rise as one of the most important trading posts in Europe. As part of the <a href="https://readcoop.eu/success-stories/the-pandetta-project-fondazione-banco-di-napoli/">Pandetta project</a>, the Fondazione is currently digitising their archives — a monumental task given its size. 190,000 individual records have already been scanned and digitally transcribed, covering the period from 1586 to 1599. So only another 400 years of history to go!



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-argentina">Argentina</h3>



And last but not certainly not least, our final member is the <a href="https://www.fundacionbyb.org/fbb-en">Fundación Bunge y Born</a>, a non-profit organisation based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One of the areas of interest of the Fundación Bunge y Born is historical documentation and the preservation of cultural heritage. Together with Transkribus and the use of text recognition and digitisation technologies, they are working on a more digital and accessible historical archive.



We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our members for your continued support and collaboration on our mission to make archives digitally available to everyone!







<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-want-to-become-a-member-of-read-coop">Want to Become a Member of READ-COOP?</h2>



If you are an archivist, a researcher, a historian or anyone else with an interest in digitising and publishing historical documents for the greater good of society, then you might want to consider becoming a member of READ-COOP.



Our cooperative is dedicated to developing technologies that seamlessly open up historical manuscripts and documents. Technologies already in existence include our Transkribus software, <a href="https://scantent.eu/">ScanTent</a> photo aid, and the Transkribus Sites search platform and we constantly have new ideas and innovations in the pipeline.



READ-COOP is a registered European cooperative that is governed by our members, not finance-focused investors. Our motto is “purpose before profit”. Being a member not only gives you a say in the future of our technologies, but also allows you to use Transkribus at a discounted price and gives you access to privileged information about the organisation.



For more information and to become a member, please visit our <a href="https://readcoop.eu/join/">member’s page</a>.

Archives Who Are Members Of READ-COOP

The <a href="https://readcoop.eu/tuc22/">Trankribus User Conference</a> is back! This year, we are once again hosting a live event in Innsbruck, packed full of workshops and presentations, not to mention the chance to meet Transkribus users from all over the globe. 



Like every year, you have the chance to present at TUC22 on a topic of your choice. Past topics have included crowd-sourcing, structure recognition, research on various periods, as well as various new Transkribus features. And if you want to get involved in this year’s TUC, then it’s not too late! We have just extended the deadline for contributions to 15 June, so there is still time to send us your ideas. But we recommend reading this blog post first, to find out everything you need to know about contributing to the TUC22.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-the-tuc">What is the TUC?</h2>



The Transkribus User Conference is our annual meetup for the global Transkribus community.&nbsp; With a two-day programme of talks and workshops, TUC is an excellent way to expand your Transkribus skills, discover the latest research projects and get to know Trankribus users from around the world. There will also be dinners, coffee breaks and a fantastic mountain hike to enjoy too.



But what makes TUC particularly special is that it is organised by Transkribus users, for Transkribus users. Each year, we invite researchers, archivists, students, and other users to contribute their ideas for workshops, talks and presentations during the conference. All the proposals are reviewed and the users who submit the best ideas then get to present at the TUC.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How can I contribute?</h2>



First, you need to think of a topic, one that is useful and/or interesting to other Transkribus users. Perhaps you have a particularly unique way of training models or a good system for collaborating remotely on the same project. Maybe you’ve just embarked on a fascinating research project. It doesn’t matter if you are a complete beginner or a Transkribus expert, what matters is that your topic is interesting and teaches other users something new about Transkribus.



Once you have your topic, then you need to decide on a format.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What kinds of formats are there?</h2>



There will be several types of session formats during the conference. Here is a quick overview:



Presentations — These are standard presentations of 20 mins plus 10 mins Q+A. They can be on any aspect of Transkribus, from technical challenges to philosophical discussions.



Scholarship Presentations — These shorter presentations of 10 mins plus 5 mins Q+A give Transkribus scholarship recipients the chance to present their research projects. Five presenters will be chosen and each will receive 10,000 credits as a reward.



Workshops — Share your Transkribus skills with the community. TUC workshops can be on any technical aspect of Transkribus and for any skill level: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Each workshop lasts approximately 1-2 hours.



Lightning Talks — Want to contribute but don’t have the resources for a full workshop or presentation? In a lightning talk of 5 mins plus 5 mins Q+A, you can present the most important aspects of your research and get instant feedback from other users.



Poster Presentations — Create an A1- or A2-sized poster about your research or project, hang it in the hallway and let other interested users come to you with their questions. It also helps to prepare a quick <a href="https://graduateschool.nd.edu/assets/32665/elevator_pitch_presentation.pdf">elevator pitch</a> too.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How do I contribute a topic?</h2>



You should send us your contribution in the form of an academic abstract. If you are a researcher, you probably already have an abstract prepared for your project. If you are not a researcher, the University of Edinburgh has an <a href="http://www.docs.hss.ed.ac.uk/iad/Researchers/Research_staff/Study_Guide_How_to_Write_an_Effective_Abstract_v2.0_.pdf">excellent guide</a>, including examples.



The length of your abstract will depend on which format you wish to contribute. Visit our main <a href="https://readcoop.eu/tuc22/">TUC page</a> to find out more.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">I’m just a PhD student, can I still contribute something?</h2>



Yes, of course! Every user is welcome to contribute to the TUC, no matter if you’re a prize-winning professor, a professional archivist, an amateur historian or a student. What is important is that your topic is interesting and beneficial to others.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How can I submit a contribution?</h2>



All contributions should be submitted online via the main <a href="https://readcoop.eu/tuc22/#call">TUC22 page</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">When do you need my contribution by?</h2>



The good news is that we have just extended the deadline for contributions until 15 June. We will then read through all the abstracts and let you know if your contribution has been accepted by the 15th of July.



Still have questions? Then please feel free to contact us at <a href="mailto:info@readcoop.eu">info@readcoop.eu</a>.



We look forward to reading your contributions!

Want to contribute to TUC22? The deadline has just been extended!

The new version of the nopaque software programme has just been released, now with a completely new Transkribus HTR pipeline.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-nopaque">What is nopaque?</h2>



nopaque is a custom-built web application developed by a small, interdisciplinary team at the University of Bielefeld, called Data Infrastructure and Digital Humanities (”INF”). The application makes it easy for researchers to get more out of their images and texts without having to worry about the technical side of things.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-now-integrated-with-the-power-of-the-transkribus-htr">Now integrated with the power of the Transkribus HTR</h2>



With Transkribus&#8217; help, nopaque has reached one of their long term goals: to integrate an HTR service into nopaque. The Transkribus HTR pipeline service is implemented as a kind of proxied service, which means that the work is split between nopaque and Transkribus. nopaque takes care of preprocessing, storage, and post-processing, while Transkribus handles the recognition and extraction of handwritten and printed texts from scanned images.



If you are interested, try out nopaque <a href="https://nopaque.uni-bielefeld.de/">here</a>.

New version of nopaque released: now including a Transkribus HTR pipeline

After the successful introduction of <a href="https://transkribus.eu/lite">Transkribus Lite 2.0</a>, we have now integrated your valuable feedback into the 2.1 release of Transkribus Lite.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-new-view-option-for-the-text-editor">New view option for the text editor</h2>



We have added the option to adjust the text-editor layout to your needs. Now you can move the toolbar to the left side of your screen with one click. This helps you to tidy up the user interface when you want to do focused work.



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/lite-2-1.mp4"></video></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transkribus will remember your configuration </h2>



Once you have everything set up to your needs in the text editor, Transkribus Lite will now store your settings. When you log back into Transkribus Lite, the layout of the editor, the position of the toolbar, and the selected font-size will be right how you left them after your last session of hard work, wrangling those ancient handwritten documents. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Manage all your text recogntion models in Transkribus Lite</h2>



With the new model manager, you can curate all your models directly in your browser. The model manager lets you change the name, description, languages, and centuries of your models.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="597" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-1024x597.png" alt="" class="wp-image-27989" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-1024x597.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-300x175.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-768x448.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-1536x896.png 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-2048x1195.png 2048w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-600x350.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>The new Models Manager</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Batch delete multiple pages </h2>



In case you want to delete more than one page from a document, you can simply select all the pages you need to remove by ticking them, and delete all of them in one go.

Transkribus Lite 2.1, improved text editor &#038; new models manager

With the start of 2022 we hit another milestone: More than 100 institutions and private persons are now <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">members</a> of READ-COOP. This is fully in line with with why we are a co-operative:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">Achieve together what one cannot do alone.</blockquote>



A co-operative society, like we are, combines the best of two worlds. We can be active in the market like a company and earn profits, and at the same time we are democratically organised like an association and headed by a board of directors elected by our members.



All our profits are re-invested towards our common goal: revolutionising handwritten text recognition and empowering users. There is no distribution of monetary profits or short-sighted business practices.



We are thrilled, that so many share this vision and want to actively be part of the organisation behind Transkribus. If you want to know how you can join, read more <a href="https://readcoop.eu/join/">here</a>.



Next stop: 200 members 🤞



Driving the historical documents revolution, together 🤝💪

We are 100+!

We are happy to introduce a new PyLaia print model (<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/transkribus-print-multi-language-dutch-german-english-finnish-french-swedish-etc/">Transkribus print 0.3</a>). You may already be familiar with our HTR+ print model, which in addition to common Antiqua and Fraktur typefaces can also decipher typewritten text, modern computer printouts, and even various unusual ‘decorative fonts’ in several languages. A similar model is now also available for PyLaia. 



We have compared the two models and the results of the PyLaia model seem to match and in some cases surpass those of the HTR+ model. On one of our test sets for example, the new PyLaia model was 30% faster while having a CER of 1.28% compared to 1.64% of the HTR+ model. We have observed before that PyLaia seems to be doing very well on large and diverse train sets such as this. Below you can see some results of the new model, but the best way to see what the model is capable of is to just try it out.&nbsp;



Also, for those of you who have to keep an eye on project budgets: HTR processing with Pylaia models uses slightly fewer credits than with HTR+ models.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="605" height="183" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-26570" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model.jpg 605w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model-300x91.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model-18x5.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model-600x181.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model-190x57.jpg 190w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model-298x90.jpg 298w" sizes="(max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px" /></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="605" height="322" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-26571" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2.jpg 605w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2-300x160.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2-18x10.jpg 18w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2-600x319.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2-113x60.jpg 113w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PyLaia-model_2-169x90.jpg 169w" sizes="(max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px" /></figure></div>

Check out the new PyLaia model for printed text

On the Maritime Portal there are several reports on the English archive collection of Prize Papers, documents that British privateers captured from enemy ships in the period 1652-1815. The portal also contains information on the website of the Dutch pricing papers, which Huygens ING (KNAW) started two years ago. 72,000 scans of mainly Dutch documents from the 17th to early 19th centuries are freely available at <a href="https://prizepapers.huygens.knaw.nl/">https://prizepapers.huygens.knaw.nl/</a>. The first aim of the Huygens ING-Project is to digitize a great variety of Dutch documents in order to make them freely available in a structured research environment. This was made possible by grants from Bureau Metamorfoze and the Samenwerkende Maritieme Fondsen. The 87 inventory numbers, from which the so diverse, unique, non-loanable material comes, have been provided by Huygens ING with some metadata such as ship and captain names and a periodization, mostly the year in which the (Dutch) ship was captured. This makes it easy to search for inventory numbers, capture dates and names of ships and captains. The requested documents will then appear in the results screen. The website was presented during the first &#8220;Vlootschouw&#8221; symposium in the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam (January 2020) to a wide audience. In the course of this, the second aim was discussed, namely to make the entire content of the documents searchable and suitable for interdisciplinary analytical research. In order to do so, an automatic transcription (OCR) was used, which made it possible to recognize printed texts. To fully read handwritten documents from the 17th to the 19th centuries, however, another method is needed. This is where Transkribus comes into play. With the HTR software, 100 scans of documents of different periods and languages are used as training material to create a Ground Truth; this happens manually. After the Ground Truth status is achieved, 900 further scans will function as a validation set. The aim is to create a new model with Transkribus which can read the Dutch Prize Papers. Read more here:<a href="https://maritiemportal.nl/blog-dutch-prize-papers-huygens-ing-knaw/#more-19325"> https://maritiemportal.nl/blog-dutch-prize-papers-huygens-ing-knaw/#more-19325&nbsp;</a>

Exploring the Dutch Prize Papers

<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transkribus-is-happy-to-introduce-new-public-models-for-spanish-and-french">Transkribus is happy to introduce new public models for Spanish and French. </h4>



Álvaro Cuéllar of the ETSO “Estilometría aplicada al Teatro del Siglo de Oro” project&nbsp; trained two models for theater manuscripts and theatre prints from the 17th and 18th century with the aim to modernize the spelling to the current rules. “<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/spanish-golden-age-theatre-prints-1-0/">The Spanish Golden Age Theatre Manuscripts (Spelling Modernization) 1.0</a>” was trained with theatre manuscripts from the 17th century and the second model on theater prints “<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/spanish-golden-age-theatre-prints-spelling-modernization-1-0/">Spanish Golden Age Theatre Prints (Spelling Modernization) 1.0</a>” was trained from prints of the 17th and 18th century. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="657" height="578" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french.png" alt="" class="wp-image-26114" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french.png 657w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french-300x264.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french-14x12.png 14w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french-600x528.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french-68x60.png 68w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/french-102x90.png 102w" sizes="(max-width: 657px) 100vw, 657px" /><figcaption>Sample from the &#8220;New France&#8221; Model of Maxime Gohier</figcaption></figure></div>



There are also two new French models trained by Maxime Gohier: The “<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/new-france-17th-18th-centuries/">New France 17th-18th centuries</a>” model is a combination of French handwritings from the late 17th and early 18th century and is based on more than 1,600 pages of correspondence and registers of colonial administrators in New France. It includes the main types of writing of the period. The second model “<a href="https://readcoop.eu/model/ordonnances-des-intendants/">Ordonnances des Intendants</a>” was developed from the &#8220;cahiers&#8221; (notebooks) of the ordinances of the intendants of New France (kept at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec). Written between 1705 and 1760, these notebooks present a good writing regularity and a standardized legal vocabulary.

New models out!

A collaboration between the Bentham Project of the University College London and the DEEDS (Documents of Early England Data Set) Project of the University of Toronto uses Transkribus for the transcription of an immense corpus of medieval charters from the 12th to the 15th century. The handwritten Latin of this period is very peculiar and confronted them with two interesting questions:&nbsp;



<ul><li>Could Transkribus be trained consistently to process abbreviated Latin words, which can represent up to half the vocabulary of medieval legal texts, and hence feature in a substantial proportion of the Documents of Early England Data Set (DEEDS) corpus at the University of Toronto?</li><li>Could Transkribus be made consistently to recognise hyphenated words which span multiple lines of text (insofar as they are both in Latin and abbreviated)?</li></ul>



To find answers, the team first decided to create their own dictionary of over a hundred abbreviated Latin words, both in their abbreviated and in their expanded form. This was done with the help of the independent programmer Ismail Prada from Switzerland, who coded abbrevSolver-master, a Python script. The contracted form was represented by compatible special characters that best reflect how they appear in type. These abbreviations were also categorized as prefixes, suffixes, or standalone abbreviations, which would alter how they would be processed by the algorithm. However, the method turned out to be problematic, as several versions of the appropriate tab-separated Excel file containing the abbreviated words and several varieties of special characters had to be created in an attempt to get it to function as intended. The only way to solve this problem was to proceed with the finding-and-replacing of the abbreviated words without the use of the script by manually finding and replacing the words. This meant a very time intensive process and was not viable in the long run. With the help of Prada, however, the script was fixed and even a superior API script was developed, which is directly connected to Transkribus after giving it the collection editor’s username and password and the collection ID. The new script is quicker and simpler to use. After running a basic command, the script communicates with Transkribus and uses its find-and-replace algorithm on each subcollection, replacing each term it finds from the abbreviation dictionary with its shorter equivalent and tagging them as abbreviated. At this stage of the project, five new HTR models were created. Over the course of this project the WER and CER both declined in a very promising way and the models which were generated after the new script was created, are extremely good. Additionally, the research team used material from Oxford University and Christ Church to further expand the ground truth and was able to create two more models, which improved the testing results of the DEEDS corpus. On the way to the new models, some obstacles, such as poor image quality and the brevity of the images, made the development even more difficult. However, the #7 model is now available freely for everyone. More than 140 000 words have been trained and the CER on the Validation Set is 0.8% For more details about the project and the developed models visit their website: <a href="https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham/2021/04/20/ucl-university-of-toronto-transkribus-htr-and-medieval-latin-abbreviations/">https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham/2021/04/20/ucl-university-of-toronto-transkribus-htr-and-medieval-latin-abbreviations/</a>

Mastering Latin Abbreviations and Hyphenations &#8211; The Bentham and DEEDS Projects

Help us to understand the institutional use of HTR: Joe Nockels is working on this project for his PHD (a Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) funded PhD). He aims to identify how to incorporate the use of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) at scale, working in collaboration with the National Library of Scotland (NLS).



The recent uptake of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) in libraries, archives, and other memory institutions has the potential to change access to the written past, at scale. What scale of work using Transkribus (one HTR software) is occurring at institutions? How are the products produced from this work being used? To what degree do institutions feel that the use of Transkribus can be extended? We invite you to take part in a survey that will help us document the changes the use of HTR is making to the information environment, while also thinking of how best to develop Transkribus in a way which meets the need of heritage institutions. The survey should take 10 minutes to complete, and we are particularly interested in responses from those working with Transkribus in institutional settings. The survey can be found <a href="https://edinburgh.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/understanding-institutional-htr-use">here</a>.

Understanding Institutional use of HTR: Your experience with Transkribus

Imagine you are a student who wants to dive into the personal story of one of the few famous child authors in history; or who wants to discover what made the authors of the Spanish Golden Age of theatre tick; or you are a teacher who wants to help the future generation in the digital humanities to achieve such things. There is a programme that may be interesting to those inclined this way. We are proud to be able to support future scholars in their research of historical documents and to encourage them in their projects. Through the Transkribus Scholarship Programme we enable students and also teachers, to use Neural Handwritten Text Recognition in their projects without worrying about funding too much. Transkribus Scholarships are granted based on dissertation and thesis projects, or courses taught and workshops held. Students may apply for HTR credits with a specific project such as a bachelor, master or PhD thesis. In addition, we also think that it is important to support teachers who want to foster the next generation of digital scholars. Therefore, we also support teachers with Scholarships.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-23692" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-300x169.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-768x432.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-16x9.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships-600x338.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/scholarships.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Projects that we have supported with our programme.</figcaption></figure>



So far, scholarships were granted to more than 70 applicants in 26 different countries. Many projects in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other European countries were supported. However, not only European applicants applied for the Scholarship programme, but also students and teachers from the US, China, Japan, Brasil, Singapore, and Israel. With this programme, we enable students to work on smaller projects which are nevertheless very important for the field, and this has made many interesting studies possible.&nbsp;



Joe Nockels, a PhD Student at the University of Edinburgh, working on a project at the National Library of Scotland, applied with his project concerning the diaries of the acclaimed child author Marjory Fleming (1803 – 1811). He used the granted credits to train an HTR+ model entitled “Early 19th Century (Child)”. With an error rate of 1.85 % on the training set and 11.26 % on the validation set, the accuracy of the model is impressive despite the limited amount of diary pages which could be used to train the model. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="601" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming-1024x601.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-21670" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming-1024x601.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming-300x176.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming-768x451.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming-16x9.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming-600x352.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Majory_Fleming.jpg 1422w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>read&amp;search platform of Marjory Fleming&#8217;s writings. </figcaption></figure>



The exported transcription is now easily accessible online via the National Library of Scotland&#8217;s Data Foundry for reuse, research, and further experimentation, and was piloted on the <a href="https://transkribus.eu/r/marjory-fleming/#/">read&amp;search platform</a>. Creating a searchable online version of Fleming’s writings means an important contribution to the historical domain, as with her works the often-neglected voice of children in history takes centre stage and they provide a key source for situation histories of Scotland. 



Another interesting project was carried out by Álvaro Cuéllar (University of Kentucky / Universidad de Valladolid). He is using Transkribus for the automatic transcription and modernization of Spanish Golden Age theatre prints and manuscripts. For the analysis of the texts he uses stylometry and thereby tries to shed light on authorship issues, as it is presented on the <a href="http://etso.es/">etso.es</a> portal. Álvaro is using Transkribus as a fundamental part of his ongoing thesis project about the application of Digital Humanities to Spanish Golden Age theatre.&nbsp;



Those are only two of many highly interesting projects that Transkribus has been able to support. If you yourself are interested or you want to find out more about Transkribus Scholarships, check out the details <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/scholarship/">here</a>.&nbsp;

Supporting Future Scholars: The Transkribus Scholarship Programme

The municipal archive of the city of Bautzen holds an extensive record of official administration from the 13th century to the present day. Council minutes are part of the main archive collections of the city archive and were almost completely digitized in 2019/2020. They can be accessed online via the <a href="https://www.archivverbund-bautzen.findbuch.net/php/main.php#3632313030">Findbuch.net-platform</a> . However, the statistics of the page views show that they are not too much in use yet. This is certainly also due to the fact, that they are partly difficult to read. With the help of Transkribus and automated text recognition the accessibility of these documents is now to be improved. Furthermore, our web-based read&amp;search-application will be used to make the documents searchable for special words and phrases and this way even more useful for scholars and the interested public.



While the first documents date back to the 13th century, the archive collections also contain extensive series of official records (from the 16th or 17th century). In addition to the court and tax books, the council minutes are particularly noteworthy among the series of official records. In the minutes, which are complete between 1623 and 1832, all decisions of the city council are compactly documented. In particular, they deal with the composition of the council, political decisions, building measures, health and social welfare measures and educational, sales and inheritance matters. &nbsp;



With Transkribus and read&amp;search, we are hoping to contribute to improving the accessibility of the material significantly, as those are vital sources for the history of the city of Bautzen and the surrounding region. This is the link to the website of the Bautzen archive where you can find out more: <a href="https://www.archivverbund-bautzen.de/">https://www.archivverbund-bautzen.de/</a>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-update">Update</h4>



As of 2023, it has become possible to access all 256 volumes of the minutes of the Bautzen City Council online. View and search the documents yourself in the online <a href="https://transkribus.eu/r/bautzen-ratsprotokolle/#/">city archive of Bautzen</a> or visit the <a href="https://www.bautzen.de/presse/2023-68">city´s website</a> for more information on the project. 


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" width="592" height="374" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bautzen-Archiv-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-21822" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bautzen-Archiv-2.jpg 592w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bautzen-Archiv-2-300x190.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bautzen-Archiv-2-16x10.jpg 16w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bautzen-Archiv-2-95x60.jpg 95w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bautzen-Archiv-2-142x90.jpg 142w" sizes="(max-width: 592px) 100vw, 592px" /></figure></div>


Source: <a href="https://www.archivverbund-bautzen.de/">https://www.archivverbund-bautzen.de/</a>

Transkribus at the municipal archive of the city of Bautzen

+ Transkribus webinar for the University of Denver Libraries

Already got to know one of our biggest models in Transkribus? That is the German_Kurrent_17th-18th model by the University of Greifswald. Different kinds of texts have been part of the training to do justice to its nickname “The Kurrent Jack of all Trades”. Most of the trained manuscripts are part of the council minutes of the University of Greifswald, the assessor votes of the Wismar High Court, the minutes of the Pomeranian government of Stralsund, the responsa of the Greifswald Law Faculty and other archival holdings such as private letter collections. The training data primarily consists of documents from the 17th-18th century and a couple of pages from the 19th century. The model has a training set of more than 1&nbsp;840&nbsp;000 words (honestly!) and a Character Error Rate on the Validation Set of 5.5%. It is a good choice to get a reasonable transcription for any Kurrent-script you have or if you need a stable base model for 17th-19th century German writings.



Many thanks to the University of Greifswald for this powerful giant!



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="756" height="517" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/hanse.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-19060" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/hanse.jpg 756w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/hanse-300x205.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/hanse-600x410.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/hanse-88x60.jpg 88w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/hanse-132x90.jpg 132w" sizes="(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px" /></figure>

+ &#8220;German_Kurrent_17th-18th&#8221; – The Kurrent Jack of all Trades

Guess who is familiar with a thousand different writers, speaks German, Lower German and Latin and has a favour for 17th century manuscripts? That is the “Acta_17”-model created by Dirk Alvermann, Elisabeth Heigl and Anna Brandt of the University of Greifswald. Thanks to them the model is publicly available in Transkribus &#8211; feel free to try it out if it fits to your material! The training data is based on legal texts and court writings from the Responsa of the Greifswald Law Faculty and can cope with simple German and Latin abbreviations. There is an HTR+ as well as a PyLaia-version of the model and in both cases nearly 600&nbsp;000 words have been trained. The Character Error Rate is about 6%.



In this regard we would like to thank all users, who have shared their models with the Transkribus crowd for their great work! An overview of all public models you can find <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/howto/public-models-in-transkribus/">here</a> or directly in Transkribus (via “Tools”-tab -&gt; “Models”).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><a href="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell.png"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-1024x726.png" alt="" class="wp-image-18582" width="684" height="484" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-1024x726.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-600x425.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-300x213.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-768x544.png 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-85x60.png 85w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell-127x90.png 127w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Greifswald-Acta-Modell.png 1259w" sizes="(max-width: 684px) 100vw, 684px" /></a></figure>

+ Acta_17 – Greifswald Supercharged

Beyond 2022 is an exciting project – triggered by a sad accident. In 1922 the Public Record Office in Dublin burned down – and thousands of invaluable historical documents got lost. Beyond 2022 – led by the Trinity College Dublin – is working on a virtual reconstruction of the archive – and its documents. Transkribus is on board.
With Transkribus the project team has developed new models for 19th-century handwritings and achieved nice results. The automated transcriptions shall support the publishing of manuscript collections of the Irish Record Commissioners (1810-1830) held at the National Archives of Ireland (NAI). This is especially important knowing that these volumes contain transcripts of lost originals.
In addition, models have been trained on untidy printed and typewritten text and according to the Beyond 2022-team the results are very satisfying. In their project such models are used to recognise the texts in the Dublin Gazette (1750s-1900s). It has been reported that Transkribus copes well with the columnar layout and has been able to reveal “much more incidental gossip than you might expect in an ‘official’ publication.” The homepage of the project and more information you can access via this link: <a href="https://beyond2022.ie/">https://beyond2022.ie/</a>
<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-18346 aligncenter" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/beyond-2022.png" alt="" width="738" height="332" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/beyond-2022.png 1411w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/beyond-2022-600x270.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/beyond-2022-300x135.png 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/beyond-2022-1024x460.png 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/beyond-2022-768x345.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 738px) 100vw, 738px" />
Image source: https://beyond2022.ie/?page_id=2#collaborations

+ Transkribus in the Beyond 2022-project

The Europäische Hansemuseum Lübeck carried out a project with school pupils where the students worked directly on the original sources of the Hanseatic cities via the Transkribus Webinterface. The history of the Hanseatic cities is part of the curriculum in schools but original sources in teaching are rare. With the Transkribus Webinterface the pupils can browse through the historic material from home and perform tasks on the documents like searching for person’s names and marking them.



We are inspired by this beautiful project: not only will the school students learn about the history of the city they live in, they will also get an idea about how historical scholarship works and where the information in their schoolbooks comes from. Moreover, this is a very practical way to get in touch with digitization in a historical context and to see how writings undecipherable at first sight can be recognised with the help of technical tools. Currently they are working on the document “Aufruf zur Flandernblockade” from 1358, which is the earliest written testament of common actions of Hanseatic merchants and cities under their self-description “Deutsche Hanse”.



In the context of this project an explanatory video for Transkribus has been created, which we don’t want to keep back from you. You can watch it here: <a href="https://youtu.be/m9SYdKyJcZ0?t=7">https://youtu.be/m9SYdKyJcZ0?t=7</a>



More information about the project you can find via this link: &nbsp;<a href="https://www.hansemuseum.eu/educational_offers/hansequellen/">https://www.hansemuseum.eu/educational_offers/hansequellen/</a>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grafik.png" alt="" class="wp-image-17983" width="723" height="440" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grafik.png 605w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grafik-600x365.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grafik-300x182.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px" /></figure>



©Europäisches Hansemuseum

+ Distance learning with Transkribus

The Hanse-cities, a trade-group from the 13th to the 17th century, have left huge amounts of highly valueable historical documents to be discovered. Until today only a small portion of these documents has been researched by historians.



Thanks to the “Hanse.Quellen.Lesen!”-project many more documents – and especially those from the 16th and 17th century are getting more attention now. Due to the sheer amount , it would not be possible to handle the workload without the help of volunteers &nbsp;and automated transcription. Therefore, the Europäische Hansemuseum Lübeck and the Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte der Hanse und des Ostseeraums (FGHO) started a citizen science project in cooperation with the Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck (AHL) to work on the transcription with the help of volunteers and Transkribus.



The “first round” of the project has been a spontaneous initiative during the first Corona lockdown in spring 2020. The objective was to try out &nbsp;if a citizen science project would be suitable to work on the scripts. Transkribus has proved to be a suitable tool to provide the technical background for digitization and transcription. Due to the great success the project has moved on to the “second round” by now, called: “Hanse.Quellen.Lesen! 2.0”. FGHO will make its documents available via the read&amp;search application of Transkribus.



Last but not lease it is a great pleasure for us to welcome the Hansemuseum also as a READ-COOP-member and are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration. &nbsp;Events like a Citizen Science Day, a summer school and university seminars dealing with the topics of the “Hanse-Quellen-Lesen!”-project are already on the agenda of our partners from the Hansemuseum.



Here you can find more information about their inspiring project: <a href="https://fgho.eu/de/hanse-quellen-lesen">https://fgho.eu/de/hanse-quellen-lesen</a>



read&amp;search demo version: <a href="https://transkribus.eu/r/demo-read-search/">https://transkribus.eu/r/demo-read-search/</a>

+ Finding out more about undiscovered Hanse-documents with the help of Transkribus

A digital future for old news



Two years ago, Erika Kuijpers (Amsterdam University) in collaboration with Judith Pollman (Leiden University) started the ambitious “Chronicling Novelty” project with the intention to digitize some three hundred local chronicles from the Dutch period of 1500-1850. Using the ScanTent, they photographed thousands of pages of chronicles in archives all over the Netherlands. These images were then uploaded on the VeleHanden platform, which is working together with Transkribus. With enthusiastic work of many volunteers, a great part of the pages is already transcribed and thus will become available to other researchers and interested individuals.



They have also filmed a beautiful video (featuring the ScanTent quite prominently J), showing the achievements and success of the project so far.



Watch the video here: 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-link is-provider-chronicling-novelty"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<a href="https://chroniclingnovelty.com/">Bekijk hier het filmpje over ons&nbsp;project</a>
</div></figure>



If cou can read Dutch, you may want to contribute to the success of this project: <a href="https://velehanden.nl/projecten/bekijk/details/project/vua_train_kronieken_transkribus">https://velehanden.nl/projecten/bekijk/details/project/vua_train_kronieken_transkribus</a>

+ Chronicling Novelty: A great crowd-sourcing project from the Netherlands

Some of you might already have come across the word “PyLaia” in connection with Transkribus. Actually, it is one more recognition engine, which has been developed by UPVLC (Universitat Politècnica de València).



PyLaia basically requires the same workflow as HTR+. First of all, please request the PyLaia training feature via <a href="mailto:info@readcoop.eu">info@readcoop.eu</a>, by dropping us a short email indicating the email address you are registered with in Transkribus. We will then enable your account for it. Afterwards PyLaia is accessible via the same “Train”-button as HTR+. You can also use the Ground Truth you have already trained with HTR+ for PyLaia, this way you can compare the results of the two trainings directly. Of course, you can also use PyLaia in order to train new material. PyLaia models will be stored together with all other models on the left side of the “Model”-interface and you can choose it for recognition in the same way as with the HTR+ models. Also, the results in Character Error Rate are usually similar.



The price for recognition with PyLaia will be significantly lower than with HTR+. The exact prices will be made public on our homepage (<a href="https://readcoop.eu/">https://readcoop.eu/</a>) soon, as we plan to start the payment model of Transkribus with 19th of October 2020. It will be very interesting for us to see how PyLaia will perform on you documents and therefore we would like to very much encourage you to try it out. Thanks, and keep transcribing! ?

+ Try out Transkribus new recognition software PyLaia!

In 2019 the <a href="https://www.kb.nl/en">KB National Library of the Netherlands</a> welcomed the <a href="https://www.kb.nl/en/organisation/research-expertise/researcher-in-residence">Researcher-in-Residence project</a> <a href="https://lab.kb.nl/dataset/entangled-histories-ordinances-low-countries">Entangled Histories Ordinances of the Low Countries</a>. Within this project, Annemieke Romein, Sara Veldoen and Michel de Gruijter studied early modern legislation, regarding volumes of printed texts. Transkribus was used in this project in order to make early modern printed texts (e.g. Dutch Gothic) readable.



The 108 volumes that were used within Entangled Histories contained thousands of rules from the early modern era. As the indexes of the various volumes were created with different standards and keywords, searching through the texts can be challenging if they need to be compared. Hence, Entangled Histories aimed at dissecting the individual texts and consequently categorise them according to a controlled vocabulary. As segmentation of texts is a field that is heavily under development, a couple of tests on what would work had been run through. In order to automatically categorise the legal texts, the Finnish tool <a href="http://www.annif.org">Annif</a> had been used. This tool has various back-ends that enable a range of options for automatic categorisation. As the project used a controlled, hierarchical vocabulary, they had to create a SKOS for this specific project. Though Annif had not been used at hierarchical structures before, they got some excellent results even though they ended up using only 400 texts in the case study.



Such a combination of techniques – recognition, segmentation and categorisation – could be interesting to also to other projects and archives to be able to quickly metadata individual texts. If you want to know more, you can check out these recent publication in the <a href="http://journal.dhbenelux.org/volume-2-digital-humanities-in-society/">DHBenelux Journal</a> (OA) called: <a href="http://journal.dhbenelux.org/journal/issues/002/article-23-romein/article-23-romein.pdf">The Datafication of Early Modern Ordinances</a>.

+ Entangled Histories Ordinances of the Low Countries

We are happy to present a new public model for Italian administrative hands! It was created as a collaborative effort by Jake Dyble (Exeter/Pisa), Antonio Iodice (Exeter/Genoa), Sara Mansutti (Cork), and Rachel Midura (Virginia Tech). The model “Italian Administrative Hand, 1550-1700” was trained on a variety of Italian-language documents from state archives in Milan, Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa. The training set represents a spectrum of humanistic, italic and cursive hands characteristic of administrative records, employed by secretaries and news writers.



The model has been trained to perform well with a mix of quantitative and qualitative information as well as many common proper nouns for the period, such as locations in Europe and contemporary rulers. Administrative documents often employ common superscript abbreviations, which the accompanying documentation treats in greater detail. The model can also be used with Latin, Spanish and French documents to some extent.



More information can be found at: <a href="https://emdigit.org/tool/2020/07/21/italian-administrative-hands.html">https://emdigit.org/tool/2020/07/21/italian-administrative-hands.html</a>

+ Public model for Italian administrative hands

We would like to make you aware of the Innovation in Archival Research Prize, that is organised by the National Archives of the Netherlands and the North Holland Archives. Within the scope of this research prize, the best demonstration of the value of the availability of large quantities of transcripts from the archives of the VOC and Haarlem notaries will be awarded. It is all about showing what new research or visualization possibilities there are, when archives are making use of automatic handwritten text recognition. The competition is connected to the project Making the Iceberg Visible of the National Archives where large quantities of historical documents are automatically transcribed and converted into machine-readable text with Transkribus technology.



If you are a student and interested in taking part in the competition, submit your research results until April 15th 2021. The award ceremony will take place during a hybrid (partly online) symposium on May 31, 2021, where the winner will present her or his research. More information about the award and the requirements for submission can be looked up here: <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/handschriftherkenning">https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/handschriftherkenning</a>



PS: Günter Mühlberger will be one of the jury members ?

+ Students up for a research competition?

<h1 class="wp-block-heading"></h1>



The Transkribus community keeps growing, we have passed the 40.000 users mark recently, and so does the number of READ-COOP-members. We currently have more than 60 private persons and institutions, who decided to become a co-owner of READ-COOP SCE. Apart from getting discounts on services of the READ-COOP they also have the chance to actively take part in the decision making and voting at the General Meeting. We are proud that well known institutions such as the British Library, the Trinity College Dublin, the Austrian Academy of Science and the University of Cambridge signed the contract.



Our institutional members mostly have an archival, library or university background, so some of the most recent members are the University of Aberdeen (<a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/">https://www.abdn.ac.uk/</a>), the Kiel University Library (<a href="https://www.uni-kiel.de/en/">https://www.uni-kiel.de/en/</a>) and the National Archives Luxembourg (<a href="https://anlux.gouvernement.lu/en.html">https://anlux.gouvernement.lu/en.html</a>). But there are also museums like the Europäische Hansemusem Lübeck (<a href="https://www.hansemuseum.eu/">https://www.hansemuseum.eu/</a>), which are taking part in the READ-COOP. What might be interesting: the Kiel University has published an article about their motivation of becoming a member. The text is in German – if you would like to read it or copy it into some kind of online translator, you can do so via this link: <a href="https://www.kooperation-international.de/aktuelles/nachrichten/detail/info/staerkung-der-digital-humanities-universitaet-kiel-wird-teil-der-internationalen-read-genossenschaft/">https://www.kooperation-international.de/aktuelles/nachrichten/detail/info/staerkung-der-digital-humanities-universitaet-kiel-wird-teil-der-internationalen-read-genossenschaft/</a>



Institutions as well as private persons can become READ-COOP-members and benefit from the advantages connected with that. If you are interested you can get more information here: <a href="https://readcoop.eu/join-us/">https://readcoop.eu/join-us/</a> , if you have more questions, you can always get in touch with us via: <a href="mailto:info@readcoop.eu">info@readcoop.eu</a>. An overview of all the READ-COOP-members you can find on our homepage: <a href="https://readcoop.eu/members/">https://readcoop.eu/members/</a>

+ More than 60 members already support the READ-COOP SCE

Recently an interview on the experience with Transkribus has been publicised by the Gramsci centre for the humanities and the University of San Marino. A model for the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci has been created, Massimo Mastrogregori of the Gramsci centre for the humanities has been working on this.



You can check out the whole article (in Italian) via this link: <a href="https://www.gramsciforthehumanities.org/transkribus-analisi-elettronica-testi-quaderni-del-carcere/">https://www.gramsciforthehumanities.org/transkribus-analisi-elettronica-testi-quaderni-del-carcere/</a>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Gramsci_1922.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-8767" width="316" height="421" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Gramsci_1922.jpg 443w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Gramsci_1922-225x300.jpg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 316px) 100vw, 316px" /><figcaption> Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Notebooks#/media/File:Gramsci_1922.jpg">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Notebooks#/media/File:Gramsci_1922.jpg</a> </figcaption></figure></div>

+Transkribus e le frontiere dell’analisi elettronica dei testi

Want to know, what a searching interface based on Transkribus can look like? We have two new demo videos available on that in our Youtube-channel (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/TranskribusEU">https://www.youtube.com/c/TranskribusEU</a>) showing two projects, which have been carried out with the goal to make historical documents searchable by special words and phrases.



One video shows the Finnish Court Records of the Finland National Archives as an use case for web-based Keyword-searching: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Sp2GuUVmM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Sp2GuUVmM</a>



The second video demonstrates the Full-Text-searching-interface of the New Zealand Alpine Journal project: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u1E3UQbW5M">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u1E3UQbW5M</a>



If you would like to know more about searching in documents with Transkribus you can always get in touch with us via <a href="mailto:info@readcoop.eu">info@readcoop.eu</a>.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NAF-interface.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-7074" width="419" height="225" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NAF-interface.jpg 801w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NAF-interface-600x322.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NAF-interface-300x161.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NAF-interface-768x412.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 419px) 100vw, 419px" /></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Alpine-Journal-Interface.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-7075" width="416" height="222" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Alpine-Journal-Interface.jpg 788w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Alpine-Journal-Interface-600x321.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Alpine-Journal-Interface-300x160.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Alpine-Journal-Interface-768x410.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 416px) 100vw, 416px" /></figure></div>

+ Videos on Keyword and Full-Text search interfaces

Many models on different languages of various epochs have been trained in Transkribus already. What we are still missing is a general model, which can recognise a wide range of modern handwritings. We have set ourselves the goal to provide such a model to our users in near future: a big and robust model, that can deal with most of modern handwritings.



Thinking about how to create the big amount of training data needed, crowdsourcing came to our mind and the idea for the readme2020 project was born. That’s where you and other Transkribus users come into play: please help us setting up the training data by providing a piece of handwritten text!



If you would like to contribute, the following four steps are everything, which is needed in order to do so:



<ol type="1"><li>Take a blank sheet of paper and write something down by hand, this can be any kind of text and topic. Of course, you can also simply copy a text.</li><li>Download the DocScan-app on your Android mobile phone (unfortunately not available for iPhones) and scan your writing, by following the instructions, shown on the screenshots on this page: <a href="https://readcoop.eu/readme2020/">https://readcoop.eu/readme2020/</a></li><li>Upload the document to Transkribus</li><li>You will get a confirmation-email with the link to our web-interface. Please add the transcription of your text there.</li></ol>



That’s already it.



As soon as there will be enough data, we from the READ-COOP-team will start the training of the modern handwriting model. We are super-curious about the outcome and are looking forward to creating something beneficial for many people together with you.



With that link you can read about all about the project-details: <a href="https://readcoop.eu/readme2020/">https://readcoop.eu/readme2020/</a>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" width="735" height="280" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/readme2020.png" alt="" class="wp-image-7035" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/readme2020.png 735w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/readme2020-600x229.png 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/readme2020-300x114.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px" /></figure></div>

+ readme2020: crowdsourcing for the recognition of modern handwritings

This project was set up to investigate the local parish records of Devon, some of which date back to the 16th century but the majority of which are 18 and 19th century. These records are largely about the raising of local taxes and then spending the money raised for the upkeep of the church and the welfare of the poor. Providing for the poor has been a legal requirement in the UK since the time of Elizabeth the First and this was managed locally long before any idea of a ‘welfare state’ was born. The records had been digitised (scanned and catalogued) as a result of a previous project and this way several thousand digital images with search facilities have become available.



Many stories were hidden within these records and Roger Claxton had been able to put together a book that picks out some of these stories and includes many illustrations taken from the documents together with the transcriptions. Some details of this book can be found at <a href="https://www.widecombe-in-the-moor.com/welfare/">https://www.widecombe-in-the-moor.com/welfare/</a>



He used Transkribus to create a workflow for the control and transcription of a considerable number of these documents. This workflow and the handwriting models generated can be used again in the future. The writing is fairly typical of the 18th and 19th centuries.



That’s what Roger Claxton says about his work with Transkribus:



“I found Transkribus provided a good structure within which to work both when building up a test set of transcribed documents (by manually entering the transcriptions) and when using Transkribus to transcribe for me once I had a suitable model. It was not perfect but then I would not expect it to be.



The documents were not especially difficult to transcribe but having a framework within which to operate helped enormously. Having the documents available with the tools to view them together with the transcription, which can be worked on, left, and then returned to, helped me keep everything organised.



Once I was happy with the transcription I could copy and paste the transcribed text into my written script.



All in all I have been very pleased to have Transkribus available to use and hope that it can remain available for future use. Thanks to the Transkribus team and to the EU for the support!”

+ Widecombe Parish Devon UK: Investigating Local Welfare Provision

We would like to inform you about an article written by Marco Roling, which has been published in March 2020 and is dedicated to experiments about the HTR-processing of documents with low standard of preservation and legibility. The tests have been carried out on documents with different levels of archival damage in order to check, how Handwritten Text Recognition can deal with that. Moreover, some ideas are presented on how the probability of good HTR-performance can be predicted.



This is the link to the online resource, if you would like to read the whole article: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340117708_Does_Handwriting_Text_Recognition_Work_for_Damaged_Archives">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340117708_Does_Handwriting_Text_Recognition_Work_for_Damaged_Archives</a>

+ Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) for damaged archives

In the article with the title &#8220;Automated Transcription of Handwritten Text: READ and TRANSKRIBUS (An Experiment with Transcribing Letters of Andrej Kmeť)&#8221;, which was published in October 2019, Dusan Katuscak describes his experience with Transkribus when working on the transcription of the handwritten letters of Andrej Kmet’. Additionally, a brief description of the Transkribus workflow (scanning with the ScanTent, image-upload, segmentation, automatic transcription) is given.



If you are interested to know more, this is the link, where you can have a look at the whole article: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336676993">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336676993</a>

+ Deciphering the letters of Andrej Kmet’ with the help of Transkribus

We from the Transkribus-team keep noticing interest amongst ambitioned users of Transkribus in giving Transkribus-workshops and this way share their knowledge. In order to provide these people with the latest information on Transkribus features, we plan to offer a trainer seminar in Innsbruck. The seminar is currently planned from Tuesday 15th of September until Thursday 17th of September 2020. We will need at least three full days to cover the most important topics. The current curriculum has got 16 modules, so a lot of information for us to run through ?.



Due to the extraordinary Corona-situation we have in many countries at the moment, we might have to postpone the training. Nevertheless, we would like to make you aware, so you can save the date in case you are interested in taking part and we will of course keep you posted on possible changes.



In order to get the most out of the seminar for every participant the maximum number will be limited to 15 people. We already have a couple of people interested in taking part, so please let us know as soon as you can if you would like to join in (via info@readcoop.eu).



We are excited to have a detailed look on Transkribus with you!

+ Train the trainers in Innsbruck

This is what comes out, when two Transkribus power user archives, namely the Amsterdam City Archives and the National Archives of the Netherlands work together: a model with 1&nbsp;384&nbsp;893 words of training data, in this case reading 18th century Dutch. The model is available to all Transkribus users now and can be found under the name: “Dutch Mountains (18th Century)”. It combines the 18th Century models of the two archives (Amsterdam City Archives : 3500+ scans of&nbsp;15 notarial handwritings and National Archives of the Netherlands&nbsp;3500+ scans of&nbsp;VOC handwritings). The Character Error Rate goes down to 5,67%.



When you are using models big as this one for your documents, it makes sense to add the corrisponding language model, or a base model, if you have already trained a model yourself. That’s where you can find the language model setting in Transkribus: “Tools”-tab -> Click “Run” in the “Text Recognition”-section -> “Select HTR-model” -> “Dictionary” (top left) -> “Language model from training data”



Have fun trying out this or one of our other public models! With this link you can have a look at the overview of all the available models: <a href="https://transkribus.eu/wiki/images/d/d6/Public_Models_in_Transkribus.pdf">https://transkribus.eu/wiki/images/d/d6/Public_Models_in_Transkribus.pdf</a>

+ Proudly presenting the Dutch giant

The second Transkribus User Conference took place at the Technical University Vienna on 8-9 November 2018.  Around 120 attendees shared their experiences with Transkribus and learnt about the latest innovations in text recognition technology.
Videos of the conference presentations are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-txVgM31rDTGlBnH-zpPjA">online on YouTube</a>!
<h4>Conference programme</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/tuc-program-2018.pdf">Programme</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Slides (licensed by <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CC BY-NC-ND 4.0</a>)</h4>
Introduction
<ul>
<li>Günter Mühlberger (University of Innsbruck) &#8211; <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/MUHLBERGER-HIGHLIGHTS-.pdf">READ and Transkribus – highlights of 2018 and future outlook</a></li>
<li>Markus Dellinger (Österreichischer Raiffeisenverband) &#8211; <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DELLINGER-SCE.pdf">The READ-COOP: working together for the future of digital cultural heritage</a></li>
</ul>
Transkribus in the archive &#8211; automated recognition of large historical collections in European archives
<ul>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/HODEL-ZURICH.pdf">Tobias Hodel (State Archives of Zurich)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/LANG-PASSAU.pdf">Eva Lang (Passau Diocesan Archives)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/KALLIO-HIRVONEN-FINLAND.pdf">Maria Kallio and Lauri Hirvonen (National Archives of Finland)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/PONTE-AMSTERDAM.pdf">Mark Ponte (Amsterdam City Archives)</a> &#8211; crowdsourcing with Transkribus</li>
</ul>
Transkribus in Practice (presentations from Transkribus users)
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/VAINIO-KURTAKKO-AND-STUBB-SLS.pdf">Maria Vainio-Kurtakko and Elisabeth Stubb (Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)</a>&#8211; papers of Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905)
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/MASSOT-ENS.pdf">Marie-Laure Massot (CAPHÉS / ANR FFL &#8211; Ecole normale supérieure Paris)</a> &#8211; papers of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/GREENSTREET-MARINE-LIVES.pdf">Colin Greenstreet (Marine Lives &amp; Chronoscopic Education)</a> &#8211; early modern legal papers, signatures, crowdsourcing
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/BROWN-DAVID-DUBLIN-V2.pdf">David Brown (Trinity College Dublin)</a> &#8211; documents from Irish Public Record Office
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ANU-LAHTINEN-HELSINKI.pdf">Anu Lahtinen (University of Helsinki)</a> &#8211; sixteenth-century Swedish administrative documents
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SLON-ZAPALA.pdf">Marek Słoń, Mikołaj Słoń and Adam Zapała (Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences)</a> &#8211; sixteenth-century tax registers, GIS mapping
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DAY-CHRIS-TNA-LONDON.pdf">Chris Day (The National Archives UK)</a>&#8211; early modern wills, language models
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/BELOBORODOVA-DILLEN-SCHAUABLE.pdf">Olga Beloborodova, Wout Dillen and Joshua Schäuble (University of Antwerp)</a> &#8211; CATCH 2020 project, manuscript genetics, digital scholarly editing, Samuel Beckett (1906 &#8211; 1989)
What’s new in Transkribus? Update on latest features.
<ul>
<li>Gundram Leifert (University of Rostock), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/LEIFERT-CITLAB.pdf">HTR+</a> (improved form of Handwritten Text Recognition)</li>
<li>Hervé Déjean (Naver Labs Europe), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DEJEAN-NAVER.pdf">Table Processing</a></li>
<li>Günter Mühlberger (University of Innsbruck), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/MUHLBERGER-KWS-SHARING-WEB.pdf">Keyword Spotting, sharing HTR models and Transkribus web</a></li>
</ul>
Digitisation on demand in archives 
<ul>
<li>Florian Kleber, Markus Diem and Fabian Hollaus (TU Wien), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/KLEBER-DIEM-HOLLAUS-.pdf">DocScan and the ScanTent</a></li>
<li>Dirk Alvermann (University of Greifswald), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ALVERMANN-GREIFSWALD.pdf">DocScan at Greifswald &#8211; Idea, practice and mutual benefit of scanning on demand</a></li>
</ul>
<iframe title="DocScan Greifswald" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVnKnsWUHOM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Keyword Spotting (in theory)
<ul>
<li>Ioannis Pratikakis (Democritus University of Thrace), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/PRATIKAKIS-DUTH.pdf">Keyword Spotting: Query by Example</a></li>
<li>Alejandro Héctor Toselli and Enrique Vidal (Universitat Politècnica de València), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/TOSELLI-ALEJANDRO-UPVLC.pdf">Indexing and Searching of Manuscript Collections</a></li>
</ul>
Keyword Spotting (in practice)
<ul>
<li>Louise Seaward (University College London), <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SEAWARD-UCL.pdf">Maximising the utility of Jeremy Bentham’s manuscripts</a></li>
</ul>
The Transkribus User Conference was organised as part of the READ project.  This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 674943.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Transkribus_wolpertinger_transparent.png"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2326" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Transkribus_wolpertinger_transparent.png" alt="" width="555" height="623" /></a>

Transkribus User Conference 2018

The first Transkribus User Conference took place at the <a href="https://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Technical University Vienna</a> on 2-3 November 2017.
Around 80 attendees came together to share their experiences with Transkribus, hear about the latest advances in Automated Text Recognition and ask developers how their documents could be automatically processed.
You can find further information in the conference programme, videos and presenters&#8217; slides provided below.
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1273" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/view-tu-the-sky-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="720" height="540" />
Conference programme
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Conference_Programme.pdf">Programme</a>
Videos (licensed by  <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CC BY-NC-ND 4.0</a> Ingrid Reinhardt)
Playlist:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7V8iXFzx_E&amp;list=PL7UbQtd4qlhLNv7zYnlyTdnLBsMJw6TOt" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Watch all presentations from the conference</a></li>
</ul>
Sessions:
<iframe title="01 Transkribus - the status quo and future plans" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_7V8iXFzx_E?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="02 Transkribus in practice. Reports from users." width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qnY3i6d4lHw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="03 Keyword searching and indexing" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/APpugG4Yzso?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="04 More reports from users - Part 1" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ih4mGsXT7NU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="04 More reports from users - Part 2" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QE9jeupnK4Y?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="05 Panel discussion" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KJ-cp3u2qr4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Presentation slides (licensed by <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CC BY-NC-ND 4.0</a>)
Transkribus Users 
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Alvermann_Bluegel_Greifswald.pdf">Dirk Alvermann and Bruno Blüggel (Universität Greifswald)</a> &#8211; working on digital search and display of c.18-19 German documents.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Dillen_Beckett_edition.pdf">Wout Dillen (University of Antwerp)</a> &#8211; working on digital edition of Samuel Beckett&#8217;s writings (c.20).
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Boenig_Wuerzner_Groundtruth-1.pdf">Matthias Boenig and Kay-Michael Würzner (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities)</a> &#8211; working on training data to improve recognition of printed text.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Vetter_Austrian_Bible.pdf">Angila Vetter (Universität Augsburg) </a>&#8211; working on critical edition of Austrian Bible.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Thoele_Incunable.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Karen Thöle (University of Göttingen)</a> &#8211; working with a heavily abbreviated medieval incunable.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Valdes_PROLOPE.pdf">Ramón Valdés Gázquez (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)</a> &#8211; working on critical edition of Lope de Vega&#8217;s plays.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Cornell_Georgian_Papers.pdf">Deborah Cornell (William &amp; Mary Libraries)</a> &#8211; working on transcription of documents from reign of George III (c.18).
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Onasch_Lemke_Barlach.pdf">Karoline Lemke and Paul Onasch (Universität Rostock)</a>&#8211; working on edition of Ernst Barlach&#8217;s (c.19) letters.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Kampkaspar_Wienerisches_Diarium.pdf">Dario Kampkaspar (Austrian Academy of Sciences)</a> &#8211; working on digital Edition of Wienerisches Diarium newspaper (c.18).
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Jerkov_Uni_Belgrade_library.pdf">Aleksandar Jerkov (University of Belgrade Library)</a> &#8211; working on automated recognition of Cyrillic text.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Lang_Table_Processing.pdf">Eva Lang (Passau Diocesan Archives)</a> &#8211; working on processing of tables and forms in church registry documents (c.19).
Presentations from READ project partners
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Labahn_Keyword_Spotting.pdf">Roger Labahn (Universität Rostock)</a> &#8211; Keyword searching and indexing in large collections of handwritten documents
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Toselli_Keyword_Spotting.pdf">Alejandro Toselli (Universitat Politècnica de València)</a> &#8211; Keyword spotting in large scale documents
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Hodel_Leifert_t2i_matching.pdf">Gundram Leifert (Universität Rostock) and Tobias Hodel (State Archives of Zurich)</a> &#8211; Text2Image matching: how to use existing images and transcripts to produce Automated Text Recognition
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Kleber_Competitions.pdf">Florian Kleber (TU Wien)</a> &#8211; Progress through competition: linking humanities data with computer science research
The Transkribus User Conference was organised as part of the READ project.  This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 674943.

Transkribus User Conference 2017

Our 3rd Transkribus User Conference will take place at the University of Innsbruck on 6-7 February 2020. Information will be shared about our recently founded READ-COOP SCE, latest technical developments and how Transkribus is used by several projects around the world. Also there will be ten workshops to complete the program. And finally there is the chance to go skiing and sledging with Transkribus team members on Saturday 8th February.



Venue



The conference will take place at the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Innsbruck, which is in the city centre of Innsbruck.&nbsp;The address of the conference building is:&nbsp;Karl-Rahner-Platz 3, 6020 Innsbruck.



Registration



Unfortunately registration is not possible any more &#8211; we are fully booked.



Conference fees



<ul><li>READ-COOP SCE members: free access</li><li>Undergraduates: 30 EUR</li><li>Regular attendees: 70 EUR</li></ul>



Coffee, lunch and conference dinner are included in the conference fee!



Program 



Thursday, 6th of February 



09:30-10:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Registration



10:00-10:15 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Opening words &#8211; Ulrike Tanzer (vice rector for research &#8211; University of Innsbruck) 



10:15-10:30 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; General introduction &#8211; Günter Mühlberger (University of Innsbruck)



10:30-11:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; After the grant: Transkribus as part of READ-COOP SCE. – Status quo and outlook&nbsp; &#8211; Andy Stauder (read-coop)



11:00-12:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Transkribus in practice presentations



120 years of alpine mountaineering &#8211; the Alpenverein-project &#8211; Gerhard Rampl, Andrea Mussmann (University of Innsbruck)



Transkribus at the National Archives of the Netherlands &#8211; Liesbeth Keijser (National Archive Netherlands)



Ottoman Turkish &#8211; Suphan Kirmizialtin (University of New York)



ScanTent in practise &#8211; Erika Kuijpers (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)



Il Cartastorie &#8211; Banco di Napoli &#8211; Sergio Riolo, Andrea Zappulli (Banco di Napoli Foundation)



12:00-12:30 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; New features in Transkribus Sebastian Colutto (read-coop)



12:30-13:30 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lunch



13:30-15:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parallel workshops (1-3)



15:00-15:30 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Coffee and cake



15:30-16:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Share your model – public models in Transkribus



Achim Rabus (University of Freiburg)



Stefan Zathammer (University of Innsbruck)



Günter Hackl (University of Innsbruck)



Vincent Noppe (National Archives Netherlands)



16:00-16:30&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Search collections with Transkribus &#8211; Felix Dietrich, Berthold Ulreich (read-coop) 



16:30-17:30&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parallel workshops (4-6)



from 20:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dinner and come together at the &#8220;Biertstindl&#8221;-restaurant



Bierstindl: Klostergasse 6, 6020 Innsbruck (<a href="https://www.bierstindl.eu/">https://www.bierstindl.eu/</a>). We will organize meeting points for those who want to go by tram or to walk (30&#8242;):



<ul><li>Johanna at <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/QcCcSqgBdmAuAj5F7">Innsbruck Landesmuseum</a>, tram leaving at 19:33 (please ask in your hotel for tickets)</li><li>Günter walking from <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/mmFdBbEg5Er5YrM66">Annasäule </a>at 19:15</li></ul>



Friday, 7th of February 



09:30-10:30&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What users think about Transkribus &#8211; Melissa Terras (University of Edinburgh)



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Crowd-sourcing with VeleHanden and Transkribus &#8211; Jirsi Reinders, Pauline van den Heuvel (Amsterdam City Archives) 



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parallel workshops (7-8)



10:30-11:00&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Transkribus in practice presentations



Late medieval writing &#8211; the Ambraser Heldenbuch &#8211; Aaron Tratter (University of Innsbruck)



Beyond 2022 &#8211; David Brown (Trinity College Dublin)



D.E.E.D.S-project &#8211; Hannah Lloyd (University of Toronto)



11:00-11:30&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Coffee and cake



11:30-12:30&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Visualizing data from parish registers &#8211; Herve Dejean (Naverlabs)



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Cadastre maps with Transkribus &#8211; Günter Mühlberger (University of Innsbruck)



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parallel workshops (9-10)



12:30-13:00 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Closing words



Workshops: 



Workshop 1: Transkribus for beginners &#8211; Tamara Terbul, Johanna Walcher (University of Innsbruck) 



Transkribus is an expert programme and it needs some training to fully understand the concept and all the features and possibilities offered by the programme. The WS will provide an introduction and enable users to work with their own documents.



Workshop 2: Training of large models &#8211; Dirk Alvermann (University of Greifswald), Achim Rabus (University of Freiburg) 



Many users ask for models which are able to read not only a specific hand, but are able to cope with many different writers. This WS will give some insights how such models can be created and especially how predictions can be made towards the expected quality of a model for unknown pages.



Workshop 3: Cadastre maps &#8211; Günter Mühlberger, Berthold Ulreich (University of Innsbruck) 



The first Austrian Cadastre was created during the 19th century. It consists of cadastre maps and accompanying documents. Within the WS we will give an introduction how the recognition of the cadastre maps is carried out and also how crowd users will be involved in the correction of tabular data.



Workshop 4: READ-COOP SCE Workshop &#8211; Daniel Wibmer (Raiffeisen Landesbank Tirol), Günter Mühlberger (University of Innsbruck) 



A European Cooperative Society is a powerful tool which provides excellent opportunities to collaborate on an intersectoral and international level. READ-COOP SCE is one of the first cooperatives in the cultural heritage and research domain. The WS will provide an opportunity to get a better understanding how cooperatives are working and how interested institutions and persons can take part to shape the future of Transkribus.



Workshop 5: Want to become a trainer for Transkribus? &#8211; Tamara Terbul, Johanna Walcher (University of Innsbruck), Annemieke Romein (University of Ghent), Stefano Bazzaco (University of Verona) 



The need for training courses and workshops for Transkribus is high and the team in Innsbruck receives many requests&nbsp; in this respect. However it is much more efficient if the Transkribus team needs not to travel but that training can be offered by local trainers. Therefore we are looking for people who would be interested and willing to become a Transkribus trainer. The WS will provide the opportunity to discuss this option and to hear about the experiences made already by people who organized Transkribus workshops independently from the Transkribus team.



Workshop 6: Working with tables &#8211; Herve Dejean (Naverlabs), Alexis Litvine (University of Cambridge) 



Tables are among the most important document types. Table recognition receives nowadays a lot of attention by research groups from all over the world.&nbsp; The WS will provide uptodate information on how to benefit from newest developments in the table recognition area.



Workshop 7: Structure recognition &#8211; Sebastian Colutto (read-coop), Günter Mühlberger (University of Innsbruck) 



With the P2PaLa tool it is possible to train structural features of an image. E.g. drawings can be separated from text, marginalia or &#8211; very useful &#8211; specific columns in tables can be detected automatically. The WS will give an introduction to the tool and show examples how it can be used in practise.



Workshop 8: Middle ages and early modern times &#8211; Tobias Hodel (University of Bern)



A significant amount of users in Transkribus are interested in documents from the middle ages and early modern times. Therefore already a large number of data are available and can be used to train robust general models. The WS is intended to gather all those who are specifically interested in this time period and who want to exchange their experiences with other users.



Workshop 9: Arabic, Hebrew and Osmanic in Transkribus (Suphan Kirmizialtin, University of New York) 



Several teams around the world have trained Arabic and Hebrew models in Transkribus. Even transliterations from Ottoman Turkish alphabet into modern Latin Turkish were performed with success. The workshop will provide background information on such projects and try to gather Transkribus users who are interested in this area.



Workshop 10: Text2Image &#8211; Günter Hackl (University of Innsbruck), Sebastian Colutto (read-coop) 



The t2i tool is useful for matching existing transcriptions with the a page image. It offers a manual mode as well as an semi-automated mode. In this way small as well as large collections of existing transcripts can be utilized for training models &#8211; without the need to carry out transcriptions from scratch.



Within the registration process you will be asked to choose the workshop sessions you prefer.



Accommodation information



We have contingents in three hotels, which you can check out and book under the following link:



For English-speakers: <a href="https://web4.deskline.net/innsbruck/en/accommodation/list?&amp;SelArrivalDate=20200205&amp;selNights=2&amp;lkPG=de63de3d-955f-4cfe-94a0-c561079014ff%20">https://web4.deskline.net/innsbruck/en/accommodation/list?&amp;SelArrivalDate=20200205&amp;selNights=2&amp;lkPG=de63de3d-955f-4cfe-94a0-c561079014ff </a>



For German-speakers: <a href="https://web4.deskline.net/innsbruck/de/accommodation/list?&amp;SelArrivalDate=20200205&amp;selNights=2&amp;lkPG=de63de3d-955f-4cfe-94a0-c561079014ff%0d">https://web4.deskline.net/innsbruck/de/accommodation/list?&amp;SelArrivalDate=20200205&amp;selNights=2&amp;lkPG=de63de3d-955f-4cfe-94a0-c561079014ff</a>



The contingents will be blocked until mid of December. If you would like to make use of this, please book as soon as you can as contingents are booked out quickly usually.



Alternatively, you can of course book your room directly at the hotel’s homepage or via a booking platform. Here are some more hotels we can recommend:



<ul><li>Austria Trend Hotel Congress: <a href="https://www.austria-trend.at/de/hotels/congress-innsbruck">https://www.austria-trend.at/de/hotels/congress-innsbruck</a></li><li>Best Western Hotel Goldener Adler: <a href="https://www.goldeneradler.com/">https://www.goldeneradler.com/</a></li><li>Hotel Innsbruck: <a href="https://www.hotelinnsbruck.com/">https://www.hotelinnsbruck.com/</a></li><li>Hotel Schwarzer Adler: <a href="https://www.schwarzeradler-innsbruck.com/home.html">https://www.schwarzeradler-innsbruck.com/home.html</a></li><li>The Penz: <a href="https://www.the-penz.com/">https://www.the-penz.com/</a></li><li>Stage 12: <a href="https://www.stage12.at/">https://www.stage12.at/</a></li></ul>



Open space for bilateral meetings on Friday afternoon



After the ending of the conference on Friday we will still have rooms available for spontaneous meetings between participants. If you have made a contact at the conference and would like to have a meeting before leaving, you can let us know in the course of the event, so we can provide a room to you.



Social events on Saturday 



For all those who will stay in Innsbruck for the weekend, we would like to organise two social events to choose. If you are interested, you can register via Conftool.



<ol><li>Skiing at Axamer Lizum </li></ol>



Axamer Lizum is a skiing resort in the vicinity of Innsbruck with possibility to go there by bus. For everybody who would like to join, we would meet directly in the skiing resort at 12 noon at the valley station of the “Schönbodenbahn” chairlift.



Via this link you can check out the skiing resort: <a href="https://www.axamer-lizum.at/en/service-our-guests.html">https://www.axamer-lizum.at/en/service-our-guests.html</a>



It is possible to borrow the skiing equipment directly at Axamer Lizum. All the info can be found here: <a href="https://www.axamer-lizum.at/en/skiing-school-amp-ski-rentals.html">https://www.axamer-lizum.at/en/skiing-school-amp-ski-rentals.html</a>



The price for a full day pass is € 41,50, but there are more options like half-day-tickets, tickets for special hours – all the prices for ski passes you can check out here: <a href="https://www.axamer-lizum.at/en/prices-axamer-lizum.html">https://www.axamer-lizum.at/en/prices-axamer-lizum.html</a>



The bus connection can be looked up here: <a href="https://www.vvt.at/page.cfm?vpath=index">https://www.vvt.at/page.cfm?vpath=index</a>



Stations to enter in the city centre of Innsbruck would be Innsbruck “Hauptbahnhof” or “Finanzamt”.



<ol><li>Sledging </li></ol>



Second option is sledging – destination will the Gleinserhöfe nearby Innsbruck. Together with Günter you will go there by bus and return by taxi &#8211; likely arrive in Innsbruck around 16:00. The climb will be about one and a half hour way and sledges can be borrowed for free. Before sledging down we will have Lunch together at the Gleinserhöfe.



We will meet at 10:45 at the <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/Ej3ecMjE8m69tuSH8">Main Railway Station &#8211; Bus terminal F</a>.



Bus 4140 to Schönberg/Stubaital. We will get out at Gemeindeamt Stubaital.



Please take good shoes (better boots), warm trousers, anorac, cap and&nbsp; gloves (important)!



Contact details



If you have any questions about the conference please contact&nbsp;<a href="mailto:email@transkribus.eu">email@transkribus.eu</a>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/innsbruck-slider.jpg" alt=""/></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/innsbruck-slider.jpg"></a></h6>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Source: https://www.erklaervideo24.at/innsbruck.php</h6>

Transkribus User Conference 2020

We are happy to report about the Scanathon, which took place at the University of Greifswald as part of their open house day on Saturday, 7th of March 2020. The event was also connected to the German Archives Day (by the Verband deutscher Archivarinnen und Archivare) and besides the Scanathon itself, mini-workshops had been organised, giving participants the opportunity to get an insight into Transkribus.
The goal of the Scanathon was to digitise archival material with the help of volunteers, digitising with the ScanTent and subsequently make the documents available for scientific research via the Internet. About a thousand pages of the homeland-supplements of different Pomeranian Newspapers of the nineteen-twenties had been scanned in the course of the event. In the next step the team of the University Archive Greifswald uploaded the scans to Transkribus, where an automatic transcription had been generated.
The great result is that today 44 years of homeland supplements of Pomeranian Newspapers are available and searchable online. You can have a look at them via the digital library here: <a href="https://exchange.uibk.ac.at/owa/redir.aspx?C=OXyxDkdAeaRNPSGC4Crexih2CnKQf0SHXOdycontU--E5zeFT8rXCA..&amp;URL=https%3a%2f%2fdigitale-bibliothek-mv.de%2fviewer%2fbrowse%2f-%2f1%2f-%2fDC%3aarchive.100uaghgw.800zeitungen%2f">https://digitale-bibliothek-mv.de/viewer/browse/-/1/-/DC:archive.100uaghgw.800zeitungen/</a>
Want to read more about the event?<a href="https://www.uni-greifswald.de/universitaet/information/aktuelles/detail/n/scanathon-am-tag-der-offenen-tuer-im-universitaetsarchiv-greifswald-61123/"> https://www.uni-greifswald.de/universitaet/information/aktuelles/detail/n/scanathon-am-tag-der-offenen-tuer-im-universitaetsarchiv-greifswald-61123/</a>
More information about the University Archive Greifswald you can find here: <a href="https://www.uni-greifswald.de/en/university/facilities/archiv0/staff-members-at-the-university-archive/">https://www.uni-greifswald.de/en/university/facilities/archiv0/staff-members-at-the-university-archive/</a>
Many thanks to the participants and organisers for this fruitful event!
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/extract-Greifswald.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-3614 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/extract-Greifswald.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="360" /></a><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/scantent-logo.png"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-3613 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/scantent-logo.png" alt="" width="135" height="105" /></a>
Image source: https://www.uni-greifswald.de/en/university/facilities/archiv0/

+ Scanathon at the University Archive Greifswald

On 6-7 February 2020 the third Transkribus User Conference took place at the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Innsbruck. 160 Transkribus users made their way to the snowy town of Innsbruck, which had been the conference’s venue for the first time.
Thanks to the great input of our invited speakers we managed to offer a versatile program and had the pleasure to get an insight into different Transkribus-related topics. The main items we had on our agenda were case studies, demonstrations of new tools and technological insights. All that with a “hands-on”-focus this year. To integrate the participants as much as possible we offered a total of ten workshops, covering topics like TextToImage, Structure Training, Tables and Cadastre maps.
In the “Transkribus in practice”-sessions experienced Transkribus users shared their knowledge about recognition projects, dealing with a variety of languages like Dutch, Italian and Ottoman Turkish. In the public model session engaged users were presenting their models, which recently became available for all Transkribus users. Models for Latin, Church Slavonic and Dutch had been amongst them.
We also heard about visualizing data from parish registers and about how the crowd-sourcing platform VeleHanden makes use of Transkribus, allowing volunteers to produce transcriptions that can then be automatically used as training data for recognising notarial documents.
As the READ-project, which was financed by the EU Horizon 2020 research and infrastructure program, has come to an end in summer 2019, we had a look into the future, where Transkribus will be further developed with the READ-COOP as legal entity. We are especially happy having been able to also welcome a good number of the COOP-members at the conference.
Currently our camera team is working on cutting the film material and as soon as possible we will make the presentation videos available to you. Transkribus users will be informed via email as soon as they will be publicised on Youtube.
The conference was accompanied by a couple of social events, which provided the opportunity to get in touch with other TUC-participants and exchange in a more casual setting, which was a great pleasure and lots of fun. We met at the pre-conference get-together at the Galway Pub on Wednesday evening to have some beer and wine in preparation for the conference.
After the conference day on Thursday we moved to the Bierstindl-restaurant for dinner. At the Tombola three people had been lucky and embraced their own ScanTent. Then it was time for our DJ to get started with an interesting song wish list (we had “Anton aus Tirol” of DJ Ötzi), which didn’t stop people from hitting the dance floor until the restaurant staff stopped them due to the curfew.
On Saturday we went sledging and skiing with the outdoor enthusiastic part of the TUC-participants, in order to enjoy the fresh snow. The weather was great, food at the mountain hut delicious and luckily we could send everybody home without serious injuries ?
We would like to thank all participants of the Transkribus User Conference again for making the event a great one. It was a place of informative presentations, inspiring talks and discussions and last but not least a lot of fun.
<a href="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-scaled.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-6263 size-large" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-1024x500.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="500" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-1024x500.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-scaled-600x293.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-300x146.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-768x375.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-1536x750.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pano-GruppeTUC2-2048x1000.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
<a href="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-scaled.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-6262 size-large" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-scaled-600x450.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-300x225.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-768x576.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/P2060079bea-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
<a href="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-6261 size-large" src="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05-600x450.jpg 600w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05-300x225.jpg 300w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05-768x576.jpg 768w, https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sledding_05.jpg 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>

+ Transkribus User Conference 2020 – we keep transcribing as READ-COOP

From the 1930s until 1953 one veteran of the Irish Revolution (1912-23), Ernie O’Malley, interviewed over 450 of his former comrades about their experiences. Although deposited in UCD Archives since the 1970s, those notebooks have been largely inaccessible to scholars principally because of Ernie O’Malley’s impenetrable handwriting. As a result, one of the richest sources on the life and afterlife of the Irish Revolution has been underused and largely overshadowed by other accounts.
Because O’Malley’s uniquely gritty, graphic and atmospheric interviews will enhance the understanding of revolutionary and post-revolutionary Ireland, and because those notebooks also provide excellent sources for scholars engaged in wider comparative studies of political violence and civil war, a team of two editors, Dr Anne Dolan, Associate Professor in Modern Irish History, Trinity College Dublin, and Dr Eve Morrison, Canon Murray Fellow in Irish History at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with UCD Archives, decided to produce the first full scholarly edition of the notebooks.
That’s what they say about their work with Transkribus:
“Faced with a daunting, decade-long undertaking, we consulted our colleague Dr David Brown (Trinity College Dublin) about Transkribus. He has used Transkribus to marvellous effect on early modern manuscripts. If Transkribus could tackle O’Malley’s hand it would fundamentally change the prospects for our work, and it did.&nbsp; Our first model produced results beyond our wildest expectations.&nbsp; Transkribus transcribed over 120 notebooks in less than two weeks, saving us several years of work. We now have a full first draft of c.3,000,000 words to edit and prepare for publication.
The success we have had with Transkribus has allowed us to expand the scope of our project.&nbsp; As well making the transcriptions freely available online alongside digital copies of the notebooks through the UCD Digital Library the Irish Manuscripts Commission will also publish a full annotated edition over multiple volumes.&nbsp; Our use of Transkribus means that this invaluable source for the history of modern Ireland will no longer go overlooked.”
On this site you can find more information about projects of the UCD-Archives: <a href="https://exchange.uibk.ac.at/owa/redir.aspx?C=n-m9v0bU_BG-G_Ib6o5_BlnVYgXJ8rsUAac9dfm2GPXaSKbr1pjXCA..&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ucd.ie%2farchives">http://www.ucd.ie/archives</a>

+ Ernie O’Malley Interviews Project’s about Transkribus

We are happy to present one of our public models, which is the “Noscemus GM v1”-model released by Stefan Zathammer as part of the Innsbruck based project NOSCEMUS (Nova Scientia: Early Modern Scientific Literature and Latin). This model can read texts set in Antiqua-based typefaces from the 16th, 17th&nbsp;and 18th&nbsp;century, outperforming most standard OCR engines. Although it is tailored towards transcribing (Neo-)Latin texts, it provides convincing results also for other languages such as French, Italian or English. The Noscemus model can therefore not only provide help for Neo-Latinists, but for all kinds of research dealing with big text corpora from the Early Modern Period.



The model is based on training data coming from the Digital Sourcebook of the project and comprises about 1,000 pages. In order to keep the model as flexible as possible, standardizations in the transcription process were kept to a minimum. Only in the following cases normalizations were made: ligatures (e.g.&nbsp;ae,&nbsp;oe,&nbsp;ct,&nbsp;ff) and abbreviations (e.g.&nbsp;-que,&nbsp;-us,&nbsp;-tur,&nbsp;…mm…) were expanded, long s (ſ) was transcribed as normal&nbsp;s,&nbsp;small caps were transcribed as majuscules.



Even though the model provides already good results, the project is still dealing with a few issues: there are some remaining inconsistencies in the transcription of quotation marks and the error rate for the transcription of Greek words or passages is still high, to a smaller degree the same applies to (German) Fraktur.



We hope that the Noscemus-model will make transcription-life easier for many of you and for all those working on different kinds of documents, don’t forget to have a look at the other models we have been able to publicize recently thanks to our hard-working users. An overview about all our public models you can find in this document:&nbsp;<a href="https://transkribus.eu/wiki/images/d/d6/Public_Models_in_Transkribus.pdf">https://transkribus.eu/wiki/images/d/d6/Public_Models_in_Transkribus.pdf</a>

+ Presenting the Noscemus-public-model

We are excited to announce that new models had been made available to the Transkribus crowd recently. Getting closer to our goal of being a platform for model sharing and thanks to our hard-working users a total of 17 models is free for public use so far. These models cover different epochs and languages like English, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Devanagari. Via this link you can access the file with an overview of the models. Also you can learn which institution or person has created the model and find a description, which documents it is suitable for: <a href="https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/">https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/</a>
If you are keen on sharing a model yourself, please get in touch and we will check the details (<a href="mailto:info@readcoop.eu">info@readcoop.eu</a>). In case the data your model is trained on is sensitive and can not be published, we can take care that only the neural network is made available to other users, but the data is hidden. This way the model can “only” be used and no data behind is shown.
We are happy about seeing the Transkribus platform and community grow and are stoked about the great work our users are doing. Thanks again for your effort and keep transcribing…
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Public-models.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-3192 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Public-models.jpg" alt="" width="657" height="188" /></a>

+ Public models: try out new ones and publicise your own!

The READ-COOP SCE with limited liability is now formally established! Under the identification number FN 520187g it is registered in the Austrian company register. READ-COOP SCE will run and further develop the Transkribus platform and related services such as the ScanTent. We are convinced that this governance model will give us plenty of opportunities to serve the needs of our members in a highly effective, open and democratic way. READ-COOP SCE is led by the board of directors consisting of Günter Mühlberger (chair), Andy Stauder (managing director) and Melissa Terras (director). The final say is with the General meeting of all members. Currently already more than 30 institutions and private persons have joined our coop. Everyone interested in the digitisation, transcription, text recognition, and searching of historical documents is wellcome to take part and to become a member! <a href="https://readcoop.eu/about/">More information</a>.

+ READ-COOP SCE formally established!

The Transkribus team collaborates with the Pattern Recognition team of the University Erlangen-Nürnberg (also member of READ-COOP SCE) and the collegues were so great to make an interesting experiment: to train their classifier for discriminating printed and handwritten text lines automatically. There are mainly two use-cases: (1) to improve recognition results if specific HTR models are applied to specific script types. However, we made the experience that the HTR engines usually can deal rather well with a large number of scripts internally so the actual benefit may not be as high as one expects. (2) to find handwritten lines in printed books. E.g. if famous persons made notes in their private books the tool which is described below will find them with amazing accuracy!
The following text was provided by Matthias Seuret and Vincent Christlein from the <a href="https://www5.cs.fau.de/nc/en/our-team/">Pattern Recognition team</a> and slightly adapted for this post:
The difficulty in the classification of text lines as being printed or handwritten does not lie much in the usage of the convolutional neural networks (CNN) or the design of their architecture, but in the acquisition and preparation of the data. Indeed, modern artificial neural networks (ANN) are now able to deal with highly complex data (such as ImageNet, which includes 90 different dog breeds to discriminate), and for a large variety of tasks, presenting enough examples to the ANN is sufficient to make it reach a fair accuracy.
It is necessary to note that ANNs (and other artificial intelligence systems) are extremely biased by the data used to train them. Because of this, the training data should be chosen carefully to ensure that the easiest way to classify the images correctly is to solve the task. For example, if all (or most) handwritten text lines are on a yellowish paper, while printed material is on white paper, then the ANN will simply learn to separate yellow from white, and will answer that any text line printed on yellowish paper is handwritten. Of course, an ANN can learn various other undesired data properties, such as the image resolution and quality, the texture of the paper, or the colour or contrast of the ink. Thus, it is of an utmost importance to use training data as similar as possible to what the ANN will have to deal with.
The system we developed for this task is based on the (printed) font groups classifier developed for the OCR-D project (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ocr-d.de/">http://www.ocr-d.de/</a>). It consists of a DenseNet-121 wrapped in some utility classes, and has been adapted for the binary classification of handwritten and printed text. The DenseNet-121 is a convolutional neural network with 121 layers, most of them being in 4 blocks densely connected. It has however a relatively small amount of parameters for a network of its size, and thus requires less data to be trained than architectures with more parameters.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/nsmail-6.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2885"/><figcaption>Machine learning schema for printed vs. handwritten text lines</figcaption></figure>



Text lines are pre-processed in two ways. First, all of them are resized to a height of 150 pixels, and their aspect ratio is preserved. This is helpful for the ANN, as it will not have to learn dealing with a large diversity of text size. Second, data augmentation methods applied to the training images. This means that some small modifications, such as shearing or hue modification, are applied to the training images every time they are shown to the neural network during the training. The goal is to make the network learn to ignore these variations and perform on unseen data.



We trained our network on text lines coming from two different sources. Approximately 40&#8217;000 printed text lines were extracted automatically from the dataset presented in &#8220;Dataset of Pages from Early Printed Books with Multiple Font Groups&#8221; (<a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3366685">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3366685</a>), and 9&#8217;577 handwritten samples provided by READ. Also, 1&#8217;562 text lines from each class were used for test purpose &#8211; none of them came from a page used for the training data. While our network reached a classification accuracy of 97.5% on the test data, one has to keep in mind that this holds true only for this specific data. The source code of our method and the trained CNN, as well as code allowing anybody to easily retrain the CNN on their own data, is available at the following address: <a href="https://github.com/seuretm/printed-vs-handwritten">https://github.com/seuretm/printed-vs-handwritten</a>



Note: If you are interested to create training data for this purpose in Transkribus you can use the &#8220;Structural tagging&#8221; feature and mark lines as &#8220;handwritten&#8221; or &#8220;printed&#8221; in your documents. The actual classifier needs to run outside of Transkribus, however, if there is some strong support from the user community we are happy to include the tool also in the Transkribus platform.

+ Printed vs. handwritten text lines &#8211; automatically separated

Dr. Dirk Alvermann of the University Archive Greifswald is one of the pioneers of Transkribus. He already started working with the first version of Transkribus in 2015. Now, he received a grant from the German Science Funds (DFG) for digitising and recognizing about 240,000 pages of court records from the 16th to 18th century. Moreover the University of Greifswald is one of the founding members of READ-COOP SCE.
Dirk Alverman and his team recently put online a blog, which offers explanations on different Transkribus-topics. By having a look at the blog, you will not only get a good understanding of things like reading order, ground truth or layout analysis in Transkribus, but also read about how to use it on your documents. As this project team has already been working with Transkribus for some time, members are able to give an insight into the practical aspects of digitisation projects processed with the help of Transkribus.
Became curious? Have a look at the blog here: <a href="https://rechtsprechung-im-ostseeraum.archiv.uni-greifswald.de/">https://rechtsprechung-im-ostseeraum.archiv.uni-greifswald.de/</a>
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<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Archiv-Greifswald.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2876 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Archiv-Greifswald.jpg" alt="" width="488" height="244" /></a>Source: <a href="https://www.uni-greifswald.de/universitaet/organisation/verwaltung/stabsstelle-universitaetsarchivkustodie/">https://www.uni-greifswald.de/universitaet/organisation/verwaltung/stabsstelle-universitaetsarchivkustodie/</a>
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+ Digitisation blog of the University Archive Greifswald

A general paper about Transkribus was published in the Journal of Documentation.  <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-07-2018-0114/full/pdf?title=transforming-scholarship-in-the-archives-through-handwritten-text-recognition-transkribus-as-a-case-study">Transforming scholarship in the archives through handwritten text recognition</a> gives an overview of the current use of HTR on archival manuscript material with the help of Transkribus. Several use cases are discussed and therefore the article demonstrates how HTR can affect scholarship and revolutionize the use of digitised heritage content.
The article shows that HTR is an efficient technology, suitable for the work on mass digitisation material. Cooperative models are a further way of sustainable use of the Transkribus platform. The fact, that Transkribus is the only publicly available platform for HTR involves the potential to be path-breaking for institutions as well as individuals by providing information, which wasn’t accessible before. Important note: The article was written in 2018 and therefore figures for recognition rates have improved significantly in the meantime!
Have a look at the article, it will give you an overview about the current use of HTR within a wide archival studies community. Via this link you can access it: <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-07-2018-0114/full/html">https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-07-2018-0114/full/html</a>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/old-books-436498_1920.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2870 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/old-books-436498_1920.jpg" alt="" width="563" height="375" /></a>Source: <a href="https://pixabay.com/de/photos/alte-b%C3%BCcher-buch-alte-bibliothek-436498/">https://pixabay.com/de/photos/alte-b%C3%BCcher-buch-alte-bibliothek-436498/</a>

+ Paper on Transkribus and handwritten text recognition (HTR) in archives now open access

On 27th of August Barbara Denicolò of the Transkribus Team Innsbruck held a workshop at the summer school &#8220;Digital Methods in Humanities and Social Sciences&#8221; at the University of Tartu (Estonia). An overview about different analysis methods and methodological principles for working with (digital) data in humanities and social sciences was given within the framework of this summer school. Transkribus was invited to represent the historical-paleographical part, i.e. the work with handwritten and printed text.
The workshop met with great interest and was booked out quickly. Half of the participants were PhD students, additionally professors, postgraduates and independent (senior) researchers took part. The three-part workshop, which lasted throughout the day, began with a detailed and wide-ranging presentation of the program, its history and its various features, as well as a brief theoretical presentation of an exemplary workflow. After the lunch break, people were working on their manuscripts directly. Exercise examples in different languages and screens were available for them in order to discuss individual project requirements.
More information about the &#8220;Digital Methods in Humanities and Social Sciences&#8221; summer school in Tartu can be found here:
<a href="https://digitalmethods.ut.ee/node/19198">https://digitalmethods.ut.ee/node/19198</a>
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<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tartu-University.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2862 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tartu-University.jpg" alt="" width="646" height="323"></a>Source: http://www.mladiinfo.eu/2017/12/15/degree-programmes-with-tuition-waiver-scholarship-at-the-university-of-tartu/

+ Successful Transkribus Workshop at DH summer school in Tartu

The SS Great Britain trust accepted the challenge of deciphering Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s handwriting. Without technical help this had been a challenge. The team in charge discovered, that his handwriting was “almost impossible to read”. That’s where Transkribus came into play: even though the project-team only started to use Transkribs and the amount of training data wasn’t very high, useful results had already been achieved. Still there is a lot of work to do, as there are several thousand pages of Brunel’s handwriting.
&#8220;It&#8217;s hugely sped up the process and we&#8217;re learning new bits about his life; there&#8217;s so much potential to unlock”, says Nick Booth from the SS Great Britain trust. The SS Great Britain in Bristol is keeping the collection of material about the life and works of Brunel and tells the story of one of Britain’s greatest engineers and Brunel’s SS Great Britain, one of the most important historic ships in the maritime history.
The BBC news became aware of the project and published an article about it, which you can find here: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-49347472">https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-49347472</a>
More information about Brunel and the SS Great Britain can be found on this homepage: <a href="https://www.ssgreatbritain.org">https://www.ssgreatbritain.org</a>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Brunel.png"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-2847 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Brunel.png" alt="" width="764" height="440" /></a>
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-49347472

+ Decoding famous British engineer’s handwriting

The digitisation team around Liesbeth Keyser from the <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/">National Archives</a> in the Netherlands is working hard on creating training data for their collections in order to prepare HTR processing on a large scale. As a first result a model based on 475.769 words is now made available for Transkribus users. The model shows a Character Error Rate of 7.48% on the training set and 6.15% on the validation set. It is based on the careful transcription of dozens of different handwritings and comprises scans from the Incoming Documents from the Dutch East India Company (Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren van de VOC) of the National Archives of the Netherlands and of 19th century Notarial deeds from the Noord-Hollands archief.  The model is named: NAN/NHA_GT_M3+ Enjoy!
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+ National Archives releases first version of a Dutch handwriting model

<a href="https://www.slavistik.uni-freiburg.de/personal/univ-prof-dr-achim-rabus">Prof. Achim Rabus</a> from the University of Freiburg has released two specialized models which are able to read Russian Curch Slavonic. The first model is called VMC_Test_4+: Training data consist of parts of the Russian Church Slavonic Great Reading Menology (16th century). The model is tailored towards transcribing Cyrillic semi-uncial script from the 16th century. Character Error Rates for the training data are 3.72% and for the validation set 3.92% and for the validation set 3.82%.
The second model is called: Combined_Full_VKS_2: Training data consist of parts of the Russian Church Slavonic Great Reading Menology (16th century), Old Church Slavonic Codex Suprasliensis (11th century), and the 11th century manuscript of the Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem. This is a generic model suitable for transcribing a variety of Old Cyrillic script styles including uncial and semi-uncial. Character Error Rates for the training data are 4.42% and for the validation set 3.92%.
Achim has written a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/38835297/Recognizing_handwritten_text_in_Slavic_manuscripts_A_neural-network_approach_using_Transkribus_1_Achim_Rabus">detailed report</a>  about his usage of Transkribus which is an excellent example how such a general model can be created. Thanks a lot!
&nbsp;

+ Special models on Slavic handwriting released

Thanks to the <a href="https://labs.onb.ac.at/">Library Labs</a> of the <a href="https://onb.ac.at/">Austrian National Library</a> and the <a href="http://newseye.eu/">NewsEye</a> project we are happy to announce the release of a free model which is capable to read German Fraktur documents especially from the 19th and 20th century in a convincing quality outperforming most standard OCR engines. The model is based on training data coming from the <a href="http://anno.onb.ac.at/">ANNO collection</a> of the Austrian National Library and comprises 442.141 words. It shows a CER of 1,55% on the training set and 1,65% on the test set without any dictionary support. Note: the model is trained on German language documents. It will provide less convincing results for other languages, such as Swedish or Finnish Fraktur. However models for these languages are also in preparation and may be released in the coming months. The Fraktur model is available for every registered user in Transkribus and called: ONB _Newseye_GT_M1+. Have fun!

+ General model for &#8220;Fraktur&#8221; released

We are excited about our next Transkribus User Conference, which this time will take place in Innsbruck. Preparations are in full swing and the date will be announced within the next few weeks.
Our last Transkribus User Conference in November 2018 was a great success, but there is always room for improvement. If you have some input to share on topics for the next conference or other suggestions for improvement, we are happy to receive them via <a href="mailto:email@transkribus.eu">email@transkribus.eu</a>.
The program of our last user conference can be found here: <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/transkribus-user-conference-2018/">https://read.transkribus.eu/transkribus-user-conference-2018/</a>
… videos of the presentations in our Youtube-channel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7UbQtd4qlhKCEgLnZbJKQu9qpA5iF-sC">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7UbQtd4qlhKCEgLnZbJKQu9qpA5iF-sC</a>
Hope to meet you there!

+ In preparation for the next Transkribus User Conference

Members of the Zurich University compared two versions of the ABBYY FineReader (FineReader XIX and FineReader Server 11) OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and the Transkribus HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) in order to find out which one is the most effective one when it comes to recognition results on black letters in historical newspapers. For the test they used PDFs with medium resolution images of the German-language Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
The recognition of black letters in historical newspapers can be particularly challenging because the distinctiveness of characters is often low, the paper quality can be bad and, in many cases, small font sizes are used. Systems like ABBYY FineReader and Transkribus are working on tackling such problems. We are happy that the experiment of the University of Zurich shows that Transkribus provides significantly better results than the commercial system ABBYY FineReader.
The article explains the effectiveness of the HTR, as only a modest amount of manual work is needed for the creation of ground truth, which makes it possible to apply the HTR on documents. Especially with printed texts in newspapers, error rates in Transkribus are usually low. Moreover, the test shows that the model, which had been trained for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, also provided good results for other newspapers of the same epoch, like the Bundesblatt and the Neue Zuger Zeitung. Good news is, that the model of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung will become public during 2019.
If you would like to have a closer look on the experiment, you can find the whole article here: <a href="https://dev.clariah.nl/files/dh2019/boa/0694.html">https://dev.clariah.nl/files/dh2019/boa/0694.html</a>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Grafik-Utrecht-University.png"><img decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2807" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Grafik-Utrecht-University.png" alt="" width="1182" height="766" /></a>
Source: https://dev.clariah.nl/files/dh2019/boa/0694.html

+ Transkribus HTR competing in OCR-test of the Zurich University

On 1st of July 2019 the READ project will turn into a European Cooperative Society (SCE). READ-COOP will serve as the basis for sustaining and further developing the Transkribus platform and related services and tools.
READ-COOP will be based on the EU directive of a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/social-economy/cooperatives/european-cooperative-society_en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">European Cooperative (SCE)</a>. Though the SCE will be set up according to EU law it will be open to members outside of the European Community as well. If you are interested in working with Transkribus on a long run &#8211; join READ-COOP and benefit from the work done by your collaborators.
One of the main reasons that we decided to go for a coop is that we want to support a &#8220;culture of collaboration&#8221; between archives/libraries, humanities scholars, computer scientists and the public (volunteers). We believe that intersectoral collaboration and full control over data are key for a successful integration of machine learning technologies into society and daily life. And an SCE delivers the best infrastructure to realize this goal.
An SCE is a legal entity which is open to new members (institutions, natural persons). Members shall benefit from an SCE directly, there is no shareholder value. Moroever SCEs are organised in a democratic way: The final say has the General Meeting.
More information can be found here: <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/coop/">https://read.transkribus.eu/coop/</a>
&nbsp;

+ Foundation of READ-COOP

In May, Barbara Denicolò from the Transkribus-Team Innsbruck and Elena Mühlbauer from the Diözesanarchiv in Passau in the name of READ travelled to the Midwest of the USA to present Transkribus to the American audience.
Though small, Kalamazoo in the state of Michigan, is well-known for one of the major congresses of the various mediaeval disciplines, which takes place every year at the Western Michigan University WMU. At the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Elena and Barbara presented Transkribus as a practical tool for philologists and historians to transcribe and annotate old manuscripts and prints manually or automatically.
After a brief general introduction, the participants were able to segment and transcribe various documents themselves in a test collection created especially for them in a total of 90 minutes, and to apply particularly good models themselves. Although the workshop was unfortunately scheduled for the last time slot on Sunday and there were already noticeably less congress participants walking across the large university campus, a good dozen interested people found their way to the workshop.
The great interest was noticeable, while participants talked about their own projects and discussed possible applications and use cases. Hanna Lloyd from the University of Toronto for example reported on her user experiences and research results in her lecture &#8220;Digitizing Paleography: Transcribing Latin Charters with Transkribus&#8221;.
More information about the conference can be found here:
<a href="https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2019/medieval-congress-program-2019.pdf">https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2019/medieval-congress-program-2019.pdf</a>
<a href="https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress">https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress</a>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Barbara_Elena_US.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-2779 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Barbara_Elena_US.jpg" alt="" width="496" height="375"></a>

+ Transkribus goes America

In the past 3 years research groups and archives from all over Europe were working on Handwritten Text Recognition for historical documents. Results can now be seen at the public Transkribus seminar at the National Archives of Finland in Helsinki on Wednesday 26.6.2019!
The Transkribus platform enables non-technical users to train neural networks in order to recognize and search historical documents. The seminar will provide an update on latest technical developments and showcase how Transkribus can be used in various scenarios. Moreover, a first version of a web-interface for searching Finnish Court records from the 19th century will be launched. With this search interface users can search historical documents in a “Google like” way.
The READ project is currently in the transformation to become one of the first European Cooperative Societies in the research, education and cultural heritage domain. Institutions and private persons are warmly invited to join this initiative.
If you would like to take part, please register yourself under the following link (participation is free of charge and registration is possible until 18.6.2019): <a href="https://exchange.uibk.ac.at/owa/redir.aspx?C=Z6Zppnc4fILbbYvp9j2uoGR_ooiGECvaVmjGQjcV1cOs63gRS-rWCA..&amp;URL=https%3a%2f%2fwww.eventbrite.com%2fe%2ftranskribus-seminar-at-the-national-archives-of-finland-tickets-61567839064">https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transkribus-seminar-at-the-national-archives-of-finland-tickets-61567839064</a>
The program includes an inspiring set of presentations from our international partners, as well as lunch and a panel discussion:
10.00. Welcoming words
10.15. READ-COOP: Günter Mühlberger (UIBK)
      Transkribus and the technology behind it
10.45. Transkribus platform: Sebastian Colutto (UIBK)
11.15. HTR in READ and Transkribus: Roger Labahn, Gundram Leifert (URO and CITlab)
11.30. Segmentation tools: Sofia Ares Oliveira (EPFL)
11.45. Table recognition: Hervé Déjean (NAVER)
12.00. ScanTent and DocScan: Matthias Wödlinger (CVL)
12.15- 13.15 Lunch
      Transkribus in practice
13.15 <a href="https://exchange.uibk.ac.at/owa/redir.aspx?C=h3FdWvsXYxxGhYvurguIOkJgMuZeTDwObeJ4IoZqujes63gRS-rWCA..&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fedelfelt.sls.fi%2f">Edelfelt project</a>: Maria Vainio-Kurtakko (SLS)
13.45 <a href="https://exchange.uibk.ac.at/owa/redir.aspx?C=-2YhxptiA5xQjSgQqp-oKe_Y-aXKkmCClkXuRCIMkOus63gRS-rWCA..&amp;URL=https%3a%2f%2fvelehanden.nl%2f">VeleHanden</a>: Marc Ponte, Jirsi Reinders
14.15 <a href="https://exchange.uibk.ac.at/owa/redir.aspx?C=WHYp8y7SgIx_yBlYWZEel5RvvTgABevIM0lZH3PTN4Gs63gRS-rWCA..&amp;URL=https%3a%2f%2fmakingamodernarchive.blogspot.com%2f">Court Records Collection</a>: (NAF and UPVLC)
15.00. Panel discussion
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/helsinki-1269310_1280.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2771" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/helsinki-1269310_1280.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></a>
Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/helsinki-city-night-finland-1269310/

+ Handwritten Text Recognition at the National Archives of Finland

Recently our new HTR+ was tested on different styles of Church Slavonic handwritings by Achim Rabus, who is holding the Chair of Slavic Linguistics at the University of Freiburg in Germany. With Transkribus’ technology the error rates went down to 3 to 5 percent. Superscript letters, abbreviations and word separation are the challenges the HTR+ had to deal with.
A paper on the topic of recognizing handwritten text in Slavic manuscripts with Transkribus is about to be publicised by Achim Rabus. Within this project he discovered the potential of Transkribus when it comes to the digitizing of Church Slavonic manuscripts: the possibility to search in big documents without even having a special model for the individual handwriting and the opportunity to avoid a full manual transcription and instead just correcting the mistakes of the automated transcription makes “digitisation-life” a lot easier.
Part of the models Achim Rabus has trained already contain different hands and provide useful automatic transcripts. Nevertheless the READ-Team is working on further improving Transkribus in the way, that also for documents with mixed handwritings automatic transcripts with low character error rate can be produced.
Cooperation is the key for getting out the biggest benefit for everybody. That is also what Achim Rabus is convinced of and therefore he is happy to share his model with interested people. You can get in touch with him via email: <a href="mailto:achim.rabus@slavistik.uni-freiburg.de">achim.rabus@slavistik.uni-freiburg.de</a>
You can have a look at the draft of the paper Recognizing handwritten text in Slavic manuscripts: A neural-network approach using Transkribus under the following link: <a href="https://www.academia.edu/38835297/Recognizing_handwritten_text_in_Slavic_manuscripts_A_neural-network_approach_using_Transkribus_1_Achim_Rabus">https://www.academia.edu/38835297/Recognizing_handwritten_text_in_Slavic_manuscripts_A_neural-network_approach_using_Transkribus_1_Achim_Rabus</a>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Slavic-manuscript_Rabus.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2766 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Slavic-manuscript_Rabus.jpg" alt="" width="579" height="200" /></a>Source: Rabus, Achim: Recognizing handwritten text in Slavic manuscripts: A neural-network approach using Transkribus 
&nbsp;

+ HTR+ reads old Slavonic documents with 3-5 % Character Error Rate

Transkribus now helps to produce a digital encyclopaedia, containing articles regarding sociability during the Age of British enlightenment. This should be achieved within the H2020 DIGITENS-project coordinated by the University of Western Brittany (UBO) in Brest, France, which gives young scholars the chance to get familiar with new digital humanities research tools and with the work in archives. At the same time the project opens them up to the opportunity to spend time abroad and therefore supports mobility.
For the DIGITENS-project, it is important to have a standardized workflow in order to work efficiently. This is where Transkribus comes into play. Our software makes it possible to cover the whole workflow from scanning with the ScanTent and the DocScan app up to international cooperation in using Handwritten Text Recognition models. This way Transkribus can give the project the required infrastructure.
To give the scholars an insight into the work with Transkribus, we have organised a workshop in Brest at the UBO on 22nd of May.
For more information about the project, visit the DIGITENS website: <a href="https://www.univ-brest.fr/digitens/">https://www.univ-brest.fr/digitens/</a>
The project is coordinated by the <a href="https://www.univ-brest.fr/gis-sociabilites">GIS Sociability</a> and the research lab <a href="https://www.univ-brest.fr/hcti">HCTI</a>. The DIGITENS encyclopedia will soon be available online at the following address: <a href="https://www.digitens.org/en">https://www.digitens.org/en </a>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Digitens.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2744" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Digitens.jpg" alt="" width="906" height="325" /></a>
http://www.digitens.fr/1/accueil

+ Transkribus-support for DIGITENS

On 4 April 2019 Transkribus users from the Netherlands and Belgium gathered under cloudy skies in The Hague to discuss the possibility of forming a network to improve the automated recognition of Dutch language documents.
The event was kindly hosted by Liesbeth Keijser and her team at <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nationaal Archief</a>.
The event attracted 45 people from more than 15 institutions including Nationaal Archief, Huygens ING, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Europeana, International Institute of Social History, Ghent University, Het Utrechts Archief, Stadsarchief Antwerpen, Noord-Hollands Archief and Picturae.
There are many active Transkribus users in the Dutch-speaking regions and The Netherlands in particular is advanced in the realms of digitisation, technological innovation and digital humanities. This event was designed to allow users to share information about their work with Transkribus and forge collaboration on a generic &#8216;Dutch model&#8217; capable of recognising a sizeable variety of Dutch language documents.
We were welcomed with an introduction from Marens Engelhard, Director of Nationaal Archief.
The event moved on with a <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/muehlberger_theHague.pdf">presentation about the vision for  a Dutch network from Günter Mühlberger, coordinator of the READ project.</a>
Günter explained that the launch of READ-COOP in the summer of 2019 will provide sustainability for Transkribus after the end of the READ project. He also offered a sneak peak of some forthcoming features in the platform including:
<ul>
<li>Advanced error rate tool to assess the accuracy of individual pages of automatically generated text</li>
<li>Trainable Layout Analysis capable of recognising page features like dates and marginalia</li>
<li>Improved interface for HTR model training, which makes it easier to mix different models together</li>
</ul>
We then heard from four sets of Transkribus users about the HTR models they had created and their experiences with the platform:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Keijser_Liakos-Nationaal-Archief.pdf">Liesbeth Keijser and Filotas Liakos (Nationaal Archief)</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Ponte-Stadsarchief-Amsterdam.pdf">Mark Ponte (Stadsarchief Amsterdam)</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Van-Rossum-IISG.pdf">Matthias van Rossum (International Institute of Social History)</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Romein-Ghent-University.pdf">Christel Annemieke Romein (Ghent University)</a></li>
</ul>
<figure id="attachment_2726" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2726" style="width: 3264px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_115135.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2726 size-full" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_115135.jpg" alt="" width="3264" height="1836" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2726" class="wp-caption-text">Liesbeth Keijser (Nationaal Archief) presenting</figcaption></figure>
The afternoon was dedicated to discussion about necessary milestones and next steps. Participants discussed the challenge of recognising Dutch material, possible avenues for exchanging data and the desirability of an individual coordinator to play a leading role in the network.
The idea of a Dutch language Transkribus network was enthusiastically received and the event concluded with suggestions of funding avenues to investigate and a proposal for twice-yearly meetings be held at different venues. There is huge potential here to work collaboratively to significantly improve the recognition of Dutch language material and we look forward to seeing what develops!

+ First meeting of Dutch Transkribus network

We are proud to be part of a successful project carried out by the <a href="https://alpineclub.org.nz">New Zealand Alpine Club</a> and the University of Innsbruck (Linguistic Institute). The complete workflow was done within Transkribus: apart from uploading files and running the text recognition volunteers used the web-based transcription interface from Transkribus to carefully correct all 17,500 pages of the New Zealand Alpine Journal.
In order to make the journal also searchable, Transkribus team members developed a simple but effective <a href="https://www.nzaj-archive.nz/">web-application</a>, which enables users to browse all issues and to search the full-text of the complete journal. The application runs also very well on a smartphone. All data is hosted by Transkribus.
The project received its funding via the crowd-funding-platform <a href="https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/accessible-digital-nz-alpine-journal-1892-2012">Give a little</a>. People donated about 6 000 NZD, which is a great support.
<a href="https://www.nzaj-archive.nz/">Check out the web-application for searching the journal editions here.</a>
&nbsp;
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Alpine-Journal-Index.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2722 aligncenter" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Alpine-Journal-Index.jpg" alt="" width="551" height="440" /></a>
Foto credit: https://www.nzaj-archive.nz/

+ Searching more than 100 years of mountaineering history with Transkribus

When we work together, there&#8217;s so much we can achieve! <a href="https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amsterdam City Archives</a> and <a href="https://velehanden.nl/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">VeleHanden</a> have just launched a fantastic crowdsourcing initiative which combines the power of our Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology with the talents of volunteer transcribers.
<ul>
<li>Try out <a href="https://velehanden.nl/projecten/bekijk/details/project/amsterdam_correct_notarieel_transkribus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Crowd leert computer lezen</a> (or Crowd teaches the computer to read)</li>
</ul>
<figure id="attachment_2695" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2695" style="width: 831px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Crowd-leert.png"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2695 size-full" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Crowd-leert.png" alt="" width="831" height="234" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2695" class="wp-caption-text">Image credit: Amsterdam City Archives</figcaption></figure>
Amsterdam City Archives are interested in opening up access to the records of Amsterdam&#8217;s notaries, which span from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. These documents are ripe for further exploration for those interested in the rich social and economic history of the Dutch capital.  The ultimate aim is to create a fully searchable record of this precious handwritten collection.
The team have been working with our <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> platform to train HTR models to recognise different parts of this collection.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/voetnoot/status/1075340886698049537" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Take a look at a recent example of a seventeenth century document recognised with a Character Error Rate of 6%. </a></li>
</ul>
The HTR models were used to generate automated transcripts of the documents. It is now up to volunteers to correct any errors made by the machine!
The project is hosted on VeleHanden, a successful crowdsourcing platform created by the company <a href="https://picturae.com/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Picturae</a>. Crowd leert computer lezen is directly connected to the Transkribus web interface, meaning that any changes made by volunteers can be fed straight back into the system to improve the automated recognition.
Anyone can take part in this new project and explore various difficulty levels to find documents they are interested in.  Volunteers collect points for their transcription work which can be redeemed at exhibitions and events at Amsterdam City Archives.
We are really looking forward to seeing what the computer can learn from the crowd&#8230;
Mark Ponte from Amsterdam City Archives gave us a sneak peak of the project at our recent Transkribus User Conference
<ul>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/PONTE-AMSTERDAM.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Check out conference slides from Amsterdam City Archives </a></li>
</ul>
<figure id="attachment_2696" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2696" style="width: 1078px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Amsterdam-City-Archives.png"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2696 size-full" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Amsterdam-City-Archives.png" alt="" width="1078" height="670" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2696" class="wp-caption-text">CORNELIS STAAL 1749-1753 &#8211; 1 &#8211; Beginner &#8211; 13131 &#8211; A31239000579. Screenshot from Crowd leert computer lezen. Image credit: Amsterdam City Archives.</figcaption></figure>

+ Crowdsourcing with Transkribus at Amsterdam City Archives

Our latest milestone has put a big smile on our faces &#8211; there are now over 20,000 registered users of our <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> platform for Handwritten Text Recognition! People are working with Transkribus across the globe, using it to train hundreds of models to recognise texts of diverse dates, languages and styles.
Across the course of the READ project, we have welcomed over 13,000 new users of the platform and created a formidable network of people interested in opening up access to historical documents. We look forward to continued growth as we move into our next phase with <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/2019/01/25/read-on-the-move-to-read-coop/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">READ COOP</a>.
Become part of our community! Follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/Transkribus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a> or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Transkribus-Platform-546945145805190/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> to keep up to date with our latest news.
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/digits-4014181_1920.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2699" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/digits-4014181_1920.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1280" /></a>

+ 20,000 tremendous Transkribus users!

The <a href="https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Royal College of Physicians</a> has been devoted to advancing medicine for the past 500 years and has amassed outstanding historical collections of rare books, medical instruments and medicinal plant specimens.
The RCP has recently digitised the 6000 sheets from the (mostly) nineteenth-century Herbarium of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.  This collection comprises thousands of preserved plant specimens and their associated labels.
Dr Michael de Swiet, Dr Henry Oakley and Professor Anthony Dayan of the RCP then decided to work with the <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> team to try to recognise the text from the Herbarium collection.
The documents present various challenges for Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology.  They contain a mix of printed and handwritten text (in ink and pencil), various languages, abbreviations and specialist vocabulary. They are also written in several (similar) hands.
A first HTR model was trained on 29,083 transcribed words  from the collection, using the pre-existing &#8216;English Writing M1’ model as part of the training process.  The <a href="http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham/2018/02/23/project-update-bentham-vs-computer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">‘English Writing M1’ model is trained to recognise the writing of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) and his secretaries</a> – it is freely available to all Transkribus users for their experiments.
In the best cases, the resulting model can automatically transcribe pages from the collection with a Character Error Rate (CER) of around 10%.
<figure id="attachment_2566" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2566" style="width: 629px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RCP-Herbarium.png"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2566 size-full" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RCP-Herbarium.png" alt="" width="629" height="627" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2566" class="wp-caption-text">Image from the Herbarium with an automated transcription of the label. Image credit: Royal College of Physicians.</figcaption></figure>
The team at the RCP are pleased with these results and would be happy if they could be shared and improved upon by other people working with Herbarium material.  If you would like to find out more about their work or have access to their HTR model, please contact the Transkribus team (<a href="mailto:email@transkribus.eu" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">email@transkribus.eu</a>).

+ Plant power! Results from the Royal College of Physicians&#8217; Herbarium

Another day, another news feature for Transkribus! <a href="https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">il Fatto Quotidiano</a>, an Italian daily newspaper, recently published a summary of our huge achievements in Handwritten Text Recognition and invited readers to try out our technology.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2019/01/31/i-manoscritti-antichi-diventano-digitali-grazie-al-progetto-read-della-commissione-europea/4937668/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read the article (in Italian)</a></li>
</ul>

+ Transkribus featured in Italian newspaper

After the tumult of World War One, the First Austrian Republic was declared in September 1919. Nearly 100 years later, the Austrian Parliamentary Directorate are making documents from this crucial period of national history available online.
They have recently digitised 9000 parliamentary papers from the First Republic and are working with our <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> platform to provide the fully-searchable text of this collection.
<figure id="attachment_2671" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2671" style="width: 670px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Austrian-Parliament.png"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2671 size-full" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Austrian-Parliament.png" alt="" width="670" height="776" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2671" class="wp-caption-text">Document from the Meeting of the Provisional National Assembly on 6 February 1919. Image credit: L1.5 Kompetenzzentrum, Parlamentsdirektion.</figcaption></figure>
These parliamentary documents contain both handwritten and printed text (using the Fraktur font of Latin calligraphy).
5000 pages of the collection have now been processed in Transkribus with a mixture of Handwritten Text Recognition and our ABBYY FineReader OCR engine. 3,500 of these pages were then manually checked to ensure the accuracy of the recognised words.  Keywords have been captured and assigned to documents, allowing for further search options.  The next task is to record the titles and metadata of the documents to enhance their usefulness.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/DE/index.shtml?jsMode=&amp;xdocumentUri=&amp;filterJq=&amp;view=&amp;NRBR=NR&amp;GP=PN&amp;R_TYP=KRZL&amp;ITYP=ALLE&amp;INR=&amp;INRBIS=&amp;SUCH=&amp;listeId=120&amp;LISTE=Show+&amp;FBEZ=FP_020" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Consult the documents on the Austrian Parliament website</a></li>
</ul>

+ Birth of the First Republic: Recognising Austrian Parliamentary papers

We’re sure many people know how challenging it can be to read historical manuscripts. Our new e-learning website, <a href="https://transkribus.eu/r/learn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus LEARN</a>  is here to help! Transkribus LEARN does not replace systematic paleography training but it allows users to practice reading and transcribing individual words, learning as they go.
Learners can practice on a computer or mobile phone and check their learning progress.
Transkribus LEARN has two transcription modes – ‘Study’ and ‘Test’. In the former, users can guess and then reveal the transcription of individual words in a manuscript. In the latter, users will be prompted to transcribe the missing word in a series of examples. At the end, a score is received, along with a list of correct and incorrect answers. Users can keep studying and testing themselves, as often as they like.
<figure id="attachment_2666" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2666" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Learn-Sutterlin.png"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-2666" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Learn-Sutterlin.png" alt="" width="600" height="567" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2666" class="wp-caption-text">Screenshot from Transkribus Learn. Sütterlin script from a 1926 Austrian recipe book.</figcaption></figure>
Levels of difficulty vary from simple, computer-generated cursive scripts to challenging historical documents in various languages and of different time periods. Users can also upload their own documents to the platform as a training exercise for students or volunteers.
To try it out:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Register for a free Transkribus account</a></li>
<li><a href="https://transkribus.eu/r/learn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Login at Transkribus Learn (works on web or mobile)</a></li>
<li>Explore the site and choose a document to practice on</li>
</ul>
Happy learning one and all! We welcome any feedback at: <a href="mailto:learn@transkribus.eu" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">learn@transkribus.eu</a>

+ Learn how to read historical handwriting with Transkribus Learn

Our new <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Transkribus-Platform-546945145805190/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook page</a> can help you keep up-to-date with the latest goings-on with Transkribus and the READ project. Like and follow us to help us grow our community!
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Facebook.png"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2657" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Facebook.png" alt="" width="734" height="295" /></a>
You can also discuss Transkribus tips and tricks in the user-led Facebook group,<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/614090738935143//" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Transkribus Users</a>.

+ Like us on Facebook!

At the READ project, we believe in using cutting-edge technology to help people study a rich variety of historical documents.
The <a href="https://cvl.tuwien.ac.at/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Computer Vision Lab</a> at the Technical University of Vienna (one of the READ project partners) have developed the <a href="https://scantent.eu/en/#docscan" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">DocScan</a> mobile app for this very purpose.
The app automatically detects the page area of a document in milliseconds and provides real-time feedback on the quality of the image. It also has an auto-shoot feature which will take a picture every time a page is turned. It works especially well when used alongside our <a href="https://scantent.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ScanTent</a> device (also developed by the Computer Vision Lab), which holds a mobile phone in place above a historical document and allows for hands-free scanning.
The remarkable potential of these tools was revealed at our recent <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/transkribus-user-conference-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus User Conference</a>. Dirk Alvermann from the <a href="https://ub.uni-greifswald.de/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of Greifswald Library</a> (one of <a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/network/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">READ&#8217;s MOU partners</a>) presented the results of an experiment his team had been conducting.
The idea is that archival users can work with DocScan and the ScanTent to digitise historical documents with their mobile phone and then share the resulting images directly with the archive.
As shown in the below video, Greifswald University Library assigned a QR code to a set of documents and asked users to scan this code with the DocScan app before they started digitising documents. Once images were scanned using DocScan and the ScanTent, they were uploaded to our <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> platform and became available to view and transcribe in the Transkribus Web interface. The library was then able to create links in its digital repository, connecting archival metadata with the digitised images on Transkribus Web. A future version of DocScan will make it easier for images to be ingested directly into archival systems.
Dirk Alvermann emphasised that this workflow could be incredibly beneficial for small archives who lack funding for digitisation.  Whilst user-generated content is not a substitute for a full digitisation strategy, it has the advantage of creating new resources and engaging interested archival users.
The DocScan app is available to download now, free of charge. The ScanTent is still in development and will be available for sale and hire later in 2019.
<iframe title="DocScan Greifswald" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVnKnsWUHOM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ALVERMANN-GREIFSWALD.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read Dirk Alvermann&#8217;s slides from the Transkribus User Conference</a></li>
<li><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.ac.tuwien.caa.docscan&amp;hl=en&amp;pcampaignid=MKT-Other-global-all-co-prtnr-py-PartBadge-Mar2515-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Download the DocScan app for free (Android only)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://scantent.eu/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read more about the ScanTent</a></li>
</ul>

+ Crowdsourced digitisation with DocScan

Our <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> platform for Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) is used by thousands of researchers and archivists all over the world. And we&#8217;ve just been featured on the news on the New Zealand television network TVNZ.
<iframe src="//players.brightcove.net/963482464001/m0mCB4JBd_default/index.html?videoId=5995249415001" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<a href="http://archives.govt.nz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Archives New Zealand</a> explained how they have been experimenting with Transkribus to recognise different historical collections. They underlined some of the huge benefits of working with Transkribus &#8211; transcription is sped up, physical documents receive less wear and tear and most importantly, historical treasures become much easier to access!
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/new-technology-helps-decipher-historic-hand-written-documents-national-archive?variant=tb_v_3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read more in the 1 News Now article</a></li>
</ul>

+ Transkribus around the globe &#8211; coverage on TVNZ

With thousands of <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transkribus</a> users working all over the world, there is huge potential for collaborative work on the automated recognition of historical documents.
<a href="https://twitter.com/thist_uzh" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dr Tobias Hodel</a> (State Archives of Zurich, University of Zurich) has set up the &#8216;Gothic Hands&#8217; working group with this mind, hoping to improve recognition of medieval Gothic script. The &#8216;Comb_Gothic_Bookwriting&#8217; model has been trained on different sets of medieval scripts and is already available to all Transkribus users. In the best cases, it can produce automated transcripts with a Character Error Rate of less than 10%.
We are looking for more users to join this working group and share images and transcripts of Gothic scripts written between the 11th and 15th century. The current model has been trained primarily on German language material, so we are especially keen to receive documents written in Latin.  
The latest contributor to the working group is <a href="http://achilleid.unige.ch/welcome" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Digital Statius: The Achilleid,</a> a project which is producing a digital edition of Achilleid, an unfinished epic poem written in Latin, in which the poet Statius (later 1st c. AD), narrates the childhood of Achilles and the stay of the hero on the island of Scyros. This text was part of the school curriculum in the Middle Ages, before losing its status as a classic. The project, funded by the <a href="http://p3.snf.ch/project-170010" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)</a> and based at the University of Geneva, aims to produce a new critical edition of the Achilleid, fully and exclusively digital, which takes into account the complete manuscript tradition of the poem (224 manuscripts, c. 8000 images). The open access digital critical edition will include a new text, a full interactive apparatus criticus, comparative visualization of numerous readings, comments, translations, links to other tools and/or platforms, and the images of the largest possible number of manuscripts.
If you work with Gothic script, you can join the team behind the Achilleid edition and many others by becoming part of the &#8216;Gothic Hands&#8217; working group.
To participate in the group, you can:
<ul>
<li>share existing training data that you have already prepared in Transkribus</li>
<li>prepare new images and transcripts in Transkribus in the &#8216;Gothic Hands&#8217; collection</li>
<li>send over files containing images and transcripts which can be matched automatically and converted into training data</li>
</ul>
Please contact Tobias Hodel (<a href="mailto:tobias.hodel@hist.uzh.ch" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">tobias.hodel@hist.uzh.ch</a>) with any questions about the group.
Working together gives us a great chance to transcribe and search medieval documents more efficiently!
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Digital-Statius.png"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2626" src="https://read.transkribus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Digital-Statius.png" alt="" width="657" height="559" /></a>

+ Medievalists! Share data with our working group to improve Handwritten Text Recognition

The READ consortium together with several other institutions is currently preparing the foundation of a legal entity (working title: READ-COOP) which will serve as the basis for sustaining and further developing the Transkribus platform and related services.
The governance model will be based on the EU directive for European Cooperative Societies (SCE). Though the SCE will be set up according to EU law it will be open to members outside of the European Community as well.
An SCE
<ul>
<li>is a legal entity that allows its members to carry out common activities, while preserving their independence</li>
<li>has the principal objective of satisfying its members&#8217; needs and not the return of capital investment</li>
<li>allows members to benefit proportionally to their profit and not to their capital contribution.</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://read.transkribus.eu/coop/">Read more</a>

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