Handwritten Text-Recognition comes to PastView! (Preview)

FEATURE RELEASE

Enhance your digital collections with Handwritten Text Recongition

We are proud to be one of the first digital collection platforms to offer Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR)! 

Both Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) are now available on the PastView Platform, providing users with the ability to automatically recognise text within typed and handwritten documents. Utilising AI, our Text Recognition service can recognise typed text and a huge array of handwriting styles from historical documents, automatically adding this information as metadata to support enhanced searching of digitised collections.

Digitised collections including handwritten documents are a common material found within most archive collections. These could be handwritten journals, diaries, letters or even notes beneath photographs.

Handwritten text has historically required the use of manual transcription services to extract text, which remains the preferable method in cases where some data must be redacted for data protection purposes or for materials such as registers which require information to be retained in structured fields for data such as Name, Address and Date of Birth. Although manual transcription services currently remain the best service for certain material types, the introduction of Handwritten Text Recognition provides an exciting, cost-effective opportunity for many collections.