IMPACT: Building a Centre of Competence for Digitisation

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

LIBER digitisation workshop 20 October 2009

IMPACT: BUILDING A CENTRE OF COMPETENCE FOR DIGITISATION

Hildelies Balk, Head of European Projects at the National Library of the Netherlands and Coordinator of the IMPACT project



2

Outline of the presentation

I 2010 vision and the role of Centres of CompetenceIMPACT as a Centre of CompetenceChallengesInnovationBuilding a sustainable Centre of Competence



3

i 2010 vision

Create a European Digital Library: all Cultural Heritageonline

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

National Memory Institutions to take the lead, smaller institutions will follow



4Hildelies Balk, Coordinator IMPACT 4

Centres of CompetenceImportant role in realising the i2010 vision: Centres of Competence

– Groups of excellent partners from public and private sector– high level of expertise – able to support different organisational stakeholders – provide over time access to a new generation of digitisation tools, services and skills

EU Funding available through Framework Programmes




IMPACT as Centre of CompetenceConsortium of 15 partners

good mix of public and private, libaries and researchAll excelling in their field Each established in a large international network to facilitate outreach

In May 2008 submitted succesful proposal in answer to the first call of the FP 7 ICT Work Programme 2007.4.1 Digital Libraries and technology-enhanced learning

Project duration: 4 years, working on transformation into sustainable Centre form 2011 onwards

Currently, over 100 people across Europe, Israel and Russia involved in the project

On the verge of extending with 6 to 12 new partners in 2010




The IMPACT Consortium8 Libraries

– National Library of the Netherlands (KB)– The British Library (BL)– Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF)– German National Library (DNB)– Bavarian State Library (BSB)– Göttingen State and University Library (UGOE) – Austrian National Library (ONB)– University of Innsbruck Library (UIBK)*

Coordination: National Library of the Netherlands

6 Universities & Research centres– Dutch Institute for Lexicology (INL)– National Centre for Scientific Research –

Demokritos (NCSR)– University of Salford (USAL)– University of Munich (CIS group)– University of Innsbruck (InfMath group)– University of Bath (UKOLN)

2 Industry partners– IBM (Haifa Research Lab)– ABBYY (Moscow)

Koninklijke Bibliotheek – National Library of the Netherlands

Centre of Competence in Mass Digitisation

Preservation and Long-term access through Networked Services

Keeping Emulation Environments Portable

Insight into issues of Permanent Access to the Records of Science in Europe



8

Main challenges in mass digitisation

Technical challenges in the process from image capture to online access

Strategic challenge: lack of institutional knowledge and expertise which causes inefficiency and ‘re-inventing the wheel’



9

IMPACT Focus on Historical printed textImprove the digital accessibility of all printed text produced before 1900.

this is the bulk of copyright free material that still lies largely untouched in the storage of most libraries across Europe. Currently difficult to access in a digital formstate-of-the-art Optical Character Recognition does not produce satisfactory results for old books, magazines and newspapersCommercial OCR technologies focus mainly on modern documentsNot fit for historic material with archaic fonts, complex layouts, warped or degraded pagescurrently available modern lexica are not sufficient for the recognition of obsolete words and inflections in historical texts. large range of language variants (for instance spelling variants)Manual post-correction is slow and expensive



10

Gothic print types

Effects are high since such fonts and characters are often not recognised correctly.

Historic fonts, obsolete characterssuch as the long s

Effects on OCRingGeneral description



11

Difficult layout

Effects are high since text is not ordered in the right way

Effects on OCRing

Due to difficult layouts, pages can be segmented incorrectly

General description



12

Historical language

Historical variants of the Dutch word ‘wereld’ (world):werelt weerelt wereld weerelds wereldt werelden weereld werrelts waerelds weerlytwereldts vveerelts waereld weerelden waerelden weerlt werlt werelds sweerelszwerlys swarels swerelts werelts swerrels weirelts tsweerelds werret vverelt werltswerrelt worreld werlden wareld weirelt weireld waerelt werreld werld vvereld weereltswerlde tswerels werreldts weereldt wereldje waereldje weurlt wald weëled



13

Two main objectives

IMPACT aims to significantly improving mass digitisation ofhistorical printed text by:

Pushing innovation of OCR software and language technologyas far as possible during the project

Sharing expertise and building capacity across EuropeCentre of Competence



14

Innovation in IMPACT

Exploring new approaches in OCR technology incorporating tools for the whole workflow of the object after it leaves the scanner, from image to full text: Image processing, OCR processing (including use of dictionaries), OCR correction and Document formattingproviding computational lexica for a number of languages that will enhance the accessibility of the material, support for lexicon development in other European languages



15

Sharing expertise and building capacityTackling the organisational barriers to mass digitisation

development of strategic tools to facilitate outreach 2008-2009demonstration of project results from 2010 onwards

extension with new partners in two iterations in 2010

building a sustainable centre of competence 2009-2011



16

Strategic tools and servicesWebsite provides access to all project outputs and forms the nucleus of a virtual network of all European digitisation centres of competence and associated research activitiesA set of Decision Support Tools that can be used to initiate, organise, manage and cost mass digitisation projectsA Learning Resource Toolbox will contain operational guidelines, providing guidance on real world implementation of all tools produced within the projectTraining and support

Help Desk system that brokers end-user requests to project partners and to other digitisation centres of competenceTraining programme dealing with large-scale digitisation issues and technologies, with a range of supporting documentation made available through the project website

Interoperability Framework with demonstrator platform



17

Extension with new partners 1Objectives:

Adding European language partners to implement IMPACT language tools for theirlanguageAdding content holders from these language areas to share experience in mass digitisation, demonstrate IMPACT strategic toolsTest and demonstrate IMPACT language independent tools Support training and dissemination in these new languages

• Entry new partners from January 2010Current languages in IMPACT: English, German, Dutch

All three Germanic languages To be added partners from Southern and Eastern Europe



18

Extension with new partners 2First iteration according to original contract with EC (1jan 2008):

up to six partners from France, Spain and Poland

Second iteration: proposal in special objective of the fifth call of FP7 (26 oct 2009): EnlargedEuropean Union

Up to six partners from countries that recently entered the EUCurrently working on proposal with partners from Slovenia, Bulgaria and Czech RepublicExtra option for working with Croatia

In 2010 consortium will be extended with up to 12 partners



19

Towards a sustainable Centre of Competence 1Achieved 2009:

• Strategic tools in place• Demonstrator platform ready for implementation• Training and dissemination programme under way• Range of excellent new partners in ‘ waiting room’• Engagement with other Centres of Competence in digitisation• Fruitful contacts with research community on one side and content holders on the

other side



20

Towards a sustainable Centre of Competence 2

To be realised in 2010-2011

Kick off series of local events for dissemination and trainingBuilding out of virtual channels: e.g. registry/repository of ground truthExtension of the IMPACT community on the web and in the worldBusiness model of sustainable Centre definedtangible commitment of all partners securedResources for continuation



21

IMPACT vision for 2012In 2012 IMPACT is a sustainable Centre of Competence for mass digitisation of historical printed text in Europe,

• providing (links to) tools and guidance;• sharing expertise;• giving access to professional training for digitisation workflow management • working with other Centres of Competence in digitisation to avoid the fragmentation and

duplication of effort across Europe• Provides a channel for user requirements on the one hand and research community on

the other hand

Around this centre, a bigger community has formed, with added expertise fromdigitisation suppliers, research institutes, libraries and archives across Europe.

This will contribute to the ultimate aim: All of Europe’s historical text digitised in a form that is accessible, on a par to born digital documents.



22

More information about the IMPACT project:

www.impact-project.eu



23

Thank you!

Questions? Join the project mailing list?

Project Office: [email protected]

Telephone: + 31 70 314 0958

Technology

IMPACT: Building a Centre of Competence for Digitisation