IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACTText digitisation: Faster, Better, Cheaper

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

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Background EU i2010 vision: create a European Digital Library: all Cultural Heritage online

Ambition to speed up the process of mass digitisation in order to produce massive corpus of digitised material online, create a ‘critical mass’

Challenges: Digitised material is becoming available too slowly, in too small quantities and from too few

sources

Users expect full text – not just images

Mixed performance of OCR for historic text

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

3

Historical text: typical OCR results

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

4

Language Challenges

The Morning Chronicle (London, England), Saturday, May 18, 1816; Issue 14678

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

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Measuring OCR Accuracy

50.0

55.0

60.0

65.0

70.0

75.0

80.0

85.0

90.0

95.0

100.0

ANJOBNER

BNWL

BDPOBRPT

BLMY

CNMR

CHPN

CHTR

CHTT

CTCR

CWPR

DNLN

DYMREXLN

FRJO

GW

HD

GLA

D

GCLN

HPTE

HLPAIP

NWIP

JOJO

JL

LEMR

LVMR

LINP

LNDH

MRTM

MCLN

NECT

NRWCNREC

NRSR

ODFW

OPTE

PMGZ

PMGU

PNCHRDNP

SNSR

ERLNTEFP

WM

CF

Newspaper Code

characters words significant words words with capital letter start

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

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Bleed through

Stains

Tight binding

Holes/tears

Creases

Paper quality

Inconsistent inking

Dirt

Stamps

Printer errors

Animals

Repairs

Lamination

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

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The IMPACT Vision

• We make digitisation of historical printed text in Europe better, faster and cheaper

• We provide tools, services and facilities for further advancement of the State of the Art in this field

Five key outcomes of the project will lead to fulfilling this vision

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

8

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

9

The IMPACT project – overview Consortium of 26 partners

Good mix of public and private partners Users, researchers and industry work together to find solutions Each established in a large international network

Coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands (KB)

Large-scale Integrating Project EU funding: € 12 100 000 (FP7 ICT Work Programme) Start date: 1 January 2008 (extended feb-april 2010) Duration: 4 years From 2012: sustainable Centre of Competence with alternative resources

Currently, over 125 people across Europe, Israel and Russia involved in the project

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

10

Aly Conteh, BL

IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.

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