So, 22.10.2023 – 29.10.2023

Winter school of Handwritten Text Recognition of Medieval Manuscripts

Latin|Greek|Czech • Call for Registration

We are witnessing a revolution in the study of manuscripts: Machine learning tools have been developed to enable automatic transcription of documents. These tools are now able to assist in the production of texts from medieval manuscripts with a level of accuracy that was previously unattainable. Today, libraries have used these tools to make their collections searchable, while researchers have accelerated the process of text editing and adopted them for use in the study of medieval documents.
After last year‘s success, we continue this year with another HTR Winter School in Vienna, focusing on the automatic recognition of handwritten texts in medieval documents. The course will have two main parts: 2 online sessions (Friday afternoons) and a two-day in-person workshop in Vienna. In between, we will use online platforms to coordinate our work between the sessions: Notion.so and Discord. During the first phase, participants will be briefly introduced to the theory of handwritten text recognition and comprehensively instructed in its practical application using the tool Transkribus (transkribus.eu).
We will work in four groups, focusing on four different periods and languages: Carolingian Latin, Late Medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, and Late Medieval Czech. Each group will have its own supervisor(s), and their goal will be to train an HTR model for each type of writing and/or to improve an existing model.
During the in-person workshop in Vienna, we will finalize the projects and visit libraries in Vienna to view selected manuscripts in person. At the end of the course you will receive a certificate and the results will be published on Zenodo and HTR-United with the names of the contributors.

The Winter School is very kindly supported by READ-COOP, the company behind Transkribus software.

 

Information & Programm  PDF


SCHEDULE

2 ZOOM ONLINE

SESSION 1, Nov 17, Friday

What is HTR? A general introduction

Transkribus 1 (uploading documents, layout recognition, simple transcription)
Introduction into manuscripts and working in groups
Working in groups

SESSION 2, Dec 15, Friday

Transkribus 2 (training of models)
Working in groups

IN-PERSON IN VIENNA

JAN 29, Monday

Finishing work on the transcription and models
Sharing is caring:
How to share your data
Alternatives to Transkribus

JAN 30, Tuesday

Library visit
Presentation of results by working groups

 

 

 

Informationen

 

Organisation

Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences



Contact  & Registration

Dr. Jan Odstrčilík
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Jan.Odstrcilik[at]oeaw.ac.at

2 Zoom online sessions
Nov 17 |  Dec 15
2-day-workshop in person at Vienna | Jan 29-30



APPLICATION

Please, send a short CV and cover letter to Jan Odstrcilik
jan.odstrcilik[at]oeaw.ac.at
and to
HTR.school[at]oeaw.ac.at
before 29th
  October 2023
As a subject, use „HTR School 2023“

Please don’t forget to indicate the team/module you would like to take (i.e. Carolingian Latin, late medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, medieval Czech). 

If you have any questions, don‘t hesitate to ask.