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

Hildelies Balk, IMPACT Project Director, KB National Library of the Netherlands

IMPACT: Challenges and solutions

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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Overview of this presentation

Challenges in digitisation of historical full text IMPACT objectives Approach Achievements Better, Faster, Cheaper The IMPACT Centre of Competence

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 Content Shared vision in Europe: all

cultural heritage available in digital form in this decade

Billions of pages of historical (pre-1900) text in libraries in Europe

Users expect full text to search, tag and re-use

Just image and metadata not enough

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 full text

VVt Venetien den 1.Junij, Anno 1618.

DJgn i f paffato te S' aö'Jifeert mo?üen/bah .)etgi'uotbciraetail)i.r/JtmelchontDecht te /sbnbe bele btr felbrr geiufttceert baer bnber eeniglje jprant o^fen/bie ftcb .metbeSpaenfcbeu enbeeemgljen bifet Cbeiiupcen berbonbru befe

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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Challenges to OCR:

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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Language Challenges

Historical variants of the Dutch word ‘wereld’ (world):

werelt weerelt wereld weerelds wereldt werelden weereld werrelts waerelds weerlyt wereldts vveerelts waereld weerelden waerelden weerlt werlt werelds sweerels zwerlys swarels swerelts werelts swerrels weirelts tsweerelds werret vverelt werlts werrelt worreld werlden wareld weirelt weireld waerelt werreld werld vvereld weerelts werlde tswerels werreldts weereldt wereldje waereldje weurlt wald weëled

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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Answering the challenges – IMPACTIMPACT – Improving Access to Text (2008-2011) Large-scale integrating research project Consortium of 26 partners Coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) Co-funded by EU (FP7 ICT Work Programme)

Objectives:Significantly improve mass digitisation of historical printed text by: Innovating OCR software and language technology Sharing expertise and building capacity across Europe Providing facilities for future research and development

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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IMPACT - Approach Content holders, researchers and industry work together to find solutions Based on real life problems in digitisation Tackle each step in the digitisation workflow from scan to full text

Image enhancement: Binarisationnoise removalgeometrical defects correctionNSCR,USAL, ABBYY

OCR

ABBY FR

IBM Adaptive

Dictonaries/interface

LMU,INL

Experimental engines USAL,NCSR,UIBK

Segmentation and Document analysis

USAL,NCSR,ABBYY

Post correction and Enrichment

CONCERT IBM

Error Profiler LMU

Language resources 9 partners

Document Understanding Platform UIBK

Preparation and scanning: guidelines and case studies

All partners

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

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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IMPACT – Approach continued Tools to be coupled in Interoperability Framework Tested with Evaluation tools and metrics Against representative set of test data with Ground Truth Basis for further research and development

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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IMPACT Achievements: summary On market: Improved commercial OCR Ready for testing in productive environment:

– Adaptive OCR engine– Tools for OCR correction with volunteer involvement – Computerlexica for nine languages – Digitisation Framework with evaluation tools and dataset– Knowledge bank with guidelines and learning resources– Service for for print space recognition

For future development:– Novel Approaches to preprocessing, OCR and post correction– New language resources with Tools for lexicon building

Centre of Competence for digitisation to start 1 january 2012 Added value: Unique network bringing together experts from different communities

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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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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Results: Better and Faster All tools evaluated in different testscenarios on IMPACT dataset All individual tools show improvement on SOA Some examples of results – there is more!

Image enhancement: Binarisationnoise removalgeometrical defects correctionNSCR,USAL, ABBYY

OCR

ABBY FR

IBM Adaptive

Dictonaries/interface

LMU,INL

Experimental engines USAL,NCSR,UIBK

Segmentation and Document analysis

USAL,NCSR,ABBYY

Post correction and Enrichment

CONCERT IBM

Error Profiler LMU

Language resources 9 partners

Document Understanding Platform UIBK

Better:hybrid line segmentation on 2700 text lines SOA 90,9 →98,8% IMPACT

Better:recognition old fonts FR9→FR10 improved 25%

Better, faster:Adaptive OCR on small testset halves FOM (post processing level required)

Faster: CONCERT increases correction speed up to 40%

Faster: postcorrection with Error Profiler up to 2,7x faster than without

Better: page split detected on 3.000 images from dataset: SOA 73%→94% IMPACT Better: language

resources show improvement for all 9 languages

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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Results: CheaperIndustry in IMPACT: ABBYY FR Historic Fonts Module more than 10 times cheaper; more flexible rates overall IBM Adaptive OCR and CONCERT: flexible rates Research in IMPACT: Key Language resources free All tools by research partners free for research and free/low rates on non commercial use

(individual licensing required), subject to volume, kind of use and material, support etc.

Framework:Digitisation Framework free and open sourceOpen source wrapper to plug in other (free) toolsFruitful contacts with new open source tool providersIncreasing number of IMPACT tools Open Source

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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Benefits for the Digital Library Reminder: IMPACT is a RESEARCH Project Fitness for productive use of tools already exceeds expectations Rough average of all tests by developers on IMPACT dataset indicates consisten improvement of

up to 20%

Waht does this mean for the Library objectives: better access, faster and cheaper production →Measured by: retrieval, time and money spent Q1-3 2011: Pilots carried out in house → focus on user feedback and implementation issues Q4 and beyond: pilots planned to measure all aspects

First test in productive environment: ABBYY FR 10 with Dutch lexikon on Dutch 17th C Newspapers 20% increase in Word Accuracy (LD) 15% improvement in word retrieval

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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Benefits for the End User Users of the Libraries:

– researchers in the humanities – Greater public

End user Only interest: retrieval = words searched and found correctly

Preliminary results of OCR combined with dictionary on difficult material (17th century newspaper)

indicate already 15% increase of words found

→For 1 M words this means 150 K more words found And this is just the beginning

Click to edit document title

Introduction to the

impact Centre of

Competence

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Why?

• Challenges in digitisation of historic material remain

• No lack of novel approaches to improve access: IMPACT and

many others

• Challenge: implementation in the production environment

• Challenge: foster further research

• Need for real life datasets with Ground Truth

• Need for real life testing and evaluation

• Need for support in implementing the solutions

• Need to continue collaboration to strengthen competence in the

community

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Who?

• Digitisation practitioners in content holding institutions

• Researchers in the field of historical document processing and

language technology

• Industry

IMPACT Centre of competence offers distinct value to each of these

target groups

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Benefits for content holders

• Exchange of best practice in community of content holders with digitisation programmes

• Knowledge Bank with comprehensive and up to date information and technology watch

reports

• Training on demand and on line tutorials

• Online support through a Helpdesk

• Support in the implementation of the innovative IMPACT solutions

• Access to the IMPACT Dataset with Ground Truth and tools for evaluation

• Digitisation Framework: Guidelines on using the open source workflow management

system Taverna in a digitisation workflow

• Access to Language Resources

• Conferences/workshops with focus on demonstration and implementation

• Working together on future practical solutions with scientific communities in the area of

pattern recognition, language technology, image processing

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Knowledge Bank

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Help Desk

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Benefits for Researchers

• New community: Bridging the gap between specialist research and real life needs

• Brings together scientific communities in the area of pattern recognition, language

technology, image processing with a focus on large scale digitisation

• Access to content holding community

• Access to large real life datasets and ground truth

• Working on implementation of research prototypes/products into digitisation

environment

• Facilities for testing and evaluating new tools and IMPACT tools

• Working groups and committees

• Access to new projects and funding opportunities

• Conferences/workshops with focus on demonstration and implementation

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Benefits for Industry

• Access to content holding community with large scale digitisation

programmes

• Access to large real life datasets and ground truth

• Facilities for testing and evaluating new tools and IMPACT tools

• Attend conferences

• Working groups and committees

• Make yourself known to your clients through register on website

• Sponsorship and exhibition opportunities

• Working together with content holders and researchers on practical

solutions

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“How do we sustain this Centre of Competence?”

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Membership

Centre Office

PartnerContributions

Website

Centre ofCompetence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Join Us

Three levels of membership:

• Open (registration) access to forum, limited set of content

• Basic membership (fee): access to all website facilities, reduced fee for

conferences

• Premium membership (fee): member of the Board, additional benefits such

as free entry to conferences

Want to sign up?

Mail to impact@kb.nl for information on membership

Access through www.digitisation.eu

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Join Us

Three levels of membership:

• Open - free

• Basic - €500 (€1000 for industry) per annum

• Premium - €6000 per annum

Want to sign up?

Mail to impact@kb.nl for information on membership

Access through www.digitisation.eu

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: Office

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Fundación Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes

Want to sign up?

Mail to impact@kb.nl for information on membership

Access through www.digitisation.eu

Introduction to the impact Centre of Competence

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A Centre of Competence in Digitisation: What?

• Not for profit organisation

• Web based international community with small core facility for support

• Curates IMPACT achievements and provides tools, services and

facilities for further advancement of the State of the Art in this field

• Focuses on practical solutions

• Distributed effort by IMPACT partners spreads risk and ensures

continuing engagement

• Income generation by offering number of resources and services at a

fee (mix of subscription and pay as you go)

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Upcoming impact events

• 14-15 November 2011: IMPACT/myGrid Taverna Hackathon (Manchester, UK)http://impact-mygrid-taverna-hackathon.wikispaces.com/

• 7-8 December 2011: DISH2011 Conference (Rotterdam, Netherlands). IMPACT is hosting a joint workshop with BHL(-Europe) and CATCHplus on “After the brainstorm: innovative ways of sustaining project results” www.dish2011.nl

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