HTR for Greek Historical Handwritten Documents

Offline handwritten text recognition (HTR) for historical documents aims for effective transcription by addressing challenges that originate from the low quality of manuscripts under study as well as from several particularities which are related to the historical period of writing. In this paper, the challenge in HTR is related to a focused goal of the transcription of Greek historical manuscripts that contain several particularities. To this end, in this paper, a convolutional recurrent neural network architecture is proposed that comprises octave convolution and recurrent units which use effective gated mechanisms. The proposed architecture has been evaluated on three newly created collections from Greek historical handwritten documents that will be made publicly available for research purposes as well as on standard datasets like IAM and RIMES. For evaluation we perform a concise study which shows that compared to state of the art architectures, the proposed one deals effectively with the challenging Greek historical manuscripts.

Subword Recognition in Historical Arabic Documents using C-GRUs

The recent years have witnessed an increased tendency to digitize historical manuscripts that not only ensures the preservation of these collections but also allows researchers and end-users’ direct access to these images. Recognition of Arabic handwriting is challenging due to the highly cursive nature of the script and other challenges associated with historical documents (degradation etc.). This paper presents an end-to-end system to recognize Arabic handwritten sub words in historical documents. More specifically, we introduce a hybrid CNN-GRU model where the shallow convolutional network learns robust feature representations while the GRU layers carry out the sequence modelling and generate the transcription of the text. The proposed system is evaluated on two different datasets, IBN SINA and VML-HD reporting recognition rates of 96.10% and 98.60% respectively. A comparison with existing techniques evaluated on the same datasets validates the effectiveness of our proposed model in characterizing Arabic subwords.

A Procedure for the Correction of Back-to-Front Degradations in Archival Manuscripts with Preservation of the Original Appearance

Virtual restoration of digital copies of the human documental heritage is crucial for facilitating both the traditional work of philologists and paleographers and the automatic analysis of the contents. Here we propose a practical and fast procedure for the correction of the typically complex background of recto–verso historical manuscripts. The procedure has two main, distinctive features: it does not need for a preliminary registration of the two page sides, and it is non-invasive, as it does not alter the original appearance of the manuscript. This makes it suitable for the routinary use in the archives, and permits an easier fruition of the manuscripts, without any information being lost. In the first stage, the detection of both the primary text and the spurious strokes is performed via soft segmentation, based on the statistical decorrelation of the two recto and verso images. In the second stage, the noisy pattern is substituted with pixels that simulate the texture of the clean surrounding background, through an efficient technique of image inpainting. As shown in the experimental results, evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively, the proposed procedure is able to perform a fine and selective removal of the degradation, while preserving other informative marks of the manuscript history.

Catalog of History Manuscrip Collection of Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran Library Collection Surakarta

ABSTRACT: The Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran Library has various types of historical manuscripts, covering history from ancient to modern periods. The existence of these collections is certainly very useful for writing history, especially the history of Java. Unfortunately, there are still many historical researchers in Indonesia who use colonial archival sources such as Besluit, Algemeen Verslag, Memorie van Overgave and documents such as Staatsblad, Rijksblad and Regeering Almanac instead of using existing historical manuscripts. This is due to the difficulties experienced by historical researchers in reading manuscripts which in terms of material are written by hand and use Javanese language and letters. To overcome this problem, it is necessary to catalog the manuscripts. The catalog of historical manuscripts in addition to containing the manuscript code number also contains a synopsis of the contents of the manuscript. This, in addition to making it easier for researchers to find manuscripts, also helps in understanding the contents of historical manuscripts from the Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran collection. The purpose of this service is to catalog the historical manuscripts of the Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran collection. ABSTRAK: Perpustakaan Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran mempunyai berbagai jenis manuskrip sejarah, meliputi sejarah dari periode kuno hingga modern. Keberadaan koleksi-koleksi ini tentu sangat bermanfaat bagi penulisan sejarah terutama sejarah Jawa. Sayangnya, masih banyak peneliti sejarah di Indonesia yang lebih banyak menggunakan sumber arsip kolonial seperti Besluit, Algemeen Verslag, Memorie van Overgave maupun dokumen seperti Staatsblad, Rijksblad dan Regeering Almanak dibandingkan memanfaatkan manuskrip sejarah yang ada. Hal ini dikarenakan kesulitan yang dialami peneliti sejarah dalam membaca manuskrip yang dari segi material ditulis dengan tangan serta menggunakan bahasa dan huruf Jawa. Untuk mengatasi masalah ini diperlukan upaya katalogisasi manuskrip. Katalogisasi manuskrip sejarah selain berisi nomor kode manuskrip juga berisi sinopsis dari isi manuskrip. Hal ini selain mempermudah peneliti dalam menemukan manuskrip juga sekaligus membantu dalam memahami isi manuskrip sejarah koleksi Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran. Tujuan dilakukannya pengabdian ini adalah untuk membuat katalog manuskrip sejarah koleksi Rekso Pustoko Mangkunegaran.

The Evolution of Orthopaedics in Greece: From Ancient Heritage to Modern Times

Greece, one of the oldest civilizations of the world, fundamentally contributed to the establishment and evolution of medicine and surgery. Undoubtedly, the foundations of the orthopaedic science are dated back to antiquity. The journey of the orthopaedic art was inaugurated with the poems of Homer and incarcerated through the practices of Hippocrates and Galen. Their deep knowledge of the musculoskeletal conditions and their treatment was generously bequeathed to humanity. This heritage acted as the catalyst for the establishment of orthopaedics in the modern Greek era. In this article, we tried to illustrate the evolution of the orthopaedic art in Greece from antiquity to modern times, reviewing the available evidence from scientific articles, books, historical manuscripts, old newspapers, and biographies. We summarize the most important events, and we identify the pioneers that shaped this new surgical branch, creating the modern Greek orthopaedic discipline.

Transkribus im Archiv – Ein polnisch-deutsches Projekt… zur Handschriftentexterkennung an historischen Dokumenten

[Transkribus in the archives – a Polish-German project of reading historical documents] Even 10 years ago, the idea that historical manuscripts, regardless of time of creation and origin, could be „read“ and searched using automated processes seemed unrealistic. However, thanks to modern machine learning methods and the use of artificial intelligence, it is now possible. Following the development of Transkribus platform (http://transkribus.eu/), a tool has become available that allows free open access to this technology. Handwriting recognition permits automatic conversion of large numbers of historical manuscripts into fully legible texts. This development will influence and change the work of archives over the next several years, especially with regard to how their collections are made accessible digitally. Using the example of a Polish-German cooperation project, the article presents the use of handwriting recognition technology in the context of an archival digitisation project and discusses the technical requirements, technological work input and results of using Transkribus in an archive. [Transkribus w archiwum – polsko-niemiecki projekt odczytania dokumentów historycznych] Jeszcze 10 lat temu pomysł, że rękopisy historyczne, niezależnie od czasu i pochodzenia, można „czytać” i przeszukiwać za pomocą zautomatyzowanych procesów, wydawał się nierealny. Dzięki nowoczesnym metodom uczenia się maszynowego i wykorzystaniu sztucznej inteligencji jest to obecnie możliwe. Wraz z rozwojem platformy Transkribus (http://transkribus.eu/) dostępne jest narzędzie, które pozwala na otwarty dostęp do tej technologii. Rozpoznawanie pisma ręcznego umożliwia automatyczną konwersję dużej liczby rękopisów historycznych na w pełni czytelne teksty. Ten rozwój wpłynie i zmieni pracę archiwów w perspektywie kilkunastu lat, zwłaszcza sposób cyfrowego udostępniania ich zbiorów. Na przykładzie polsko-niemieckiego projektu współpracy, w artykule przedstawiono wykorzystanie technologii rozpoznawania pisma ręcznego w kontekście projektu digitalizacji archiwalnej oraz omówiono wymagania techniczne, wkład prac technologicznych i rezultaty wykorzystania Transkribusa w archiwum.

Archiving white community historical manuscripts in postcolonial Zimbabwe

This paper is premised on the observation that mainstream archival activities are the main cause and source of the “absences and silences” of the voices of the minority and the underrepresented in the archives. The aim of the study is to explain the context and documentation strategies of archiving and preservation of Historical Manuscripts (HM) of the white community in post-colonial Zimbabwe. In particular, the study seeks to: (a) Determine the legislative, regulatory framework for the management of HM in selected cultural heritage institutions in Zimbabwe; (b) Assess the acquisition policies and practices of mainstream cultural heritage institutions in Zimbabwe; (c) Describe the usage, purposes, and accessibility of both pre-archival and archival HM of the white community. The findings of the study revealed adequate provisions in the National Archives of Zimbabwe Act (2001) for the archiving of HM of the white community in Zimbabwe, although there were limitations of outdated policies for the institutions studied. The study also addressed the issue of limited funding and shrinking budgets which impeded on the operations of both selected cultural heritage institutions and white community associations. This resulted in failure to adhere to archiving/records management standards, and the upgrading of equipment and facilities, as well as the recruitment and retention of requisite and qualified staff. Overall, this endangers the HM collections to neglect and decay. HM were migrated from Zimbabwe to other countries regionally and abroad into private hands, and their extent, nature, condition of storage and status of preservation are undetermined.

Chromatic assessment of newly manufactured leather and parchment for museum purposes

Cultural heritage represents a national treasure evolving from the culture and spirituality of people. Therefore, it must be continuously recovered, protected and developed by all generations as priceless heritage. Referring to the Romanian cultural heritage items that are placed in restoration, at present, some works have been done for partial or complete replacing of degraded materials, both as the result of ageing under atmospheric and biologic agents. The aim of this study is testing different samples of new leather and parchment under UV radiation in the 220-380nm domain, in order to simulate the accelerated destruction in photo-oxidative conditions. The following materials have been studied: book binding leather obtained from calf hide, tanned by different systems (vegetable or vegetable and chromium) and parchment obtained from different kinds of animals. The evolution of the chromatic characteristics (luminosity, shade and chroma) at different exposure time was quantified by the diffuse reflectance technique in visible domain range and CIE-Lab software. Based on the chromatic stability after UV exposure, the most stable types of leather and parchment have been selected for further applications in the restoration process of historical manuscripts and books' covers.