Presentation given by Hildelies Balk during the 2nd LIBER-EBLIDA Workshop on Digitisation of Library Material in Europe (19-21 October 2009, The Hague, the Netherlands)

1. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
IMPACT: BUILDING A CENTRE OF
COMPETENCE FOR DIGITISATION
LIBER digitisation workshop 20 October 2009
Hildelies Balk, Head of European Projects at the National Library of
the Netherlands and Coordinator of the IMPACT project

2. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Outline of the presentation
I 2010 vision and the role of Centres of Competence
IMPACT as a Centre of Competence
Challenges
Innovation
Building a sustainable Centre of Competence
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3. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
i 2010 vision
Create a European Digital Library: all Cultural Heritage
online
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
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4. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Centres of Competence
Important 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
LIBER digitisation workshop 20 October 2009
Hildelies Balk, Coordinator IMPACT 4
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5. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
IMPACT as Centre of Competence
Consortium of 15 partners
good mix of public and private, libaries and research
All 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
LIBER digitisation workshop 20 October 2009
Hildelies Balk, Coordinator IMPACT 5
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6. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
The IMPACT Consortium
8 Libraries 6 Universities & Research centres
– National Library of the Netherlands (KB) – Dutch Institute for Lexicology (INL)
– The British Library (BL) – National Centre for Scientific Research –
Demokritos (NCSR)
– Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF)
– University of Salford (USAL)
– German National Library (DNB)
– University of Munich (CIS group)
– Bavarian State Library (BSB)
– University of Innsbruck (InfMath group)
– Göttingen State and University Library (UGOE)
– University of Bath (UKOLN)
– Austrian National Library (ONB)
– University of Innsbruck Library (UIBK)*
2 Industry partners
– IBM (Haifa Research Lab)
– ABBYY (Moscow)
Coordination: National Library of the Netherlands
LIBER digitisation workshop 20 October 2009
Hildelies Balk, Coordinator IMPACT 6
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7. Insight into issues of Permanent
Access to the Records of Science in
Europe
Centre of Competence in Mass Digitisation
Preservation and Long-term access
through Networked Services
Keeping Emulation Environments Portable
Koninklijke Bibliotheek – National Library of the Netherlands

8. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
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’
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9. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
IMPACT Focus on Historical printed text
Improve 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 form
state-of-the-art Optical Character Recognition does not produce satisfactory results
for old books, magazines and newspapers
Commercial OCR technologies focus mainly on modern documents
Not fit for historic material with archaic fonts, complex layouts, warped or degraded
pages
currently 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
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10. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Gothic print types
General description Effects on OCRing
Historic fonts, obsolete characters Effects are high since such fonts and
such as the long s characters are often not recognised correctly.
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11. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Difficult layout
General description
Due to difficult layouts,
pages can be
segmented incorrectly
Effects on OCRing
Effects are high since
text is not ordered in
the right way
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12. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Historical language
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
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13. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Two main objectives
IMPACT aims to significantly improving mass digitisation of
historical printed text by:
Pushing innovation of OCR software and language technology
as far as possible during the project
Sharing expertise and building capacity across Europe
Centre of Competence
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14. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
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 formatting
providing computational lexica for a number of languages that will enhance the
accessibility of the material,
support for lexicon development in other European languages
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15. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Sharing expertise and building capacity
Tackling the organisational barriers to mass digitisation
development of strategic tools to facilitate outreach 2008-2009
demonstration of project results from 2010 onwards
extension with new partners in two iterations in 2010
building a sustainable centre of competence 2009-2011
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16. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Strategic tools and services
Website provides access to all project outputs and forms the nucleus of a virtual
network of all European digitisation centres of competence and associated
research activities
A set of Decision Support Tools that can be used to initiate, organise, manage
and cost mass digitisation projects
A Learning Resource Toolbox will contain operational guidelines, providing
guidance on real world implementation of all tools produced within the project
Training and support
Help Desk system that brokers end-user requests to project partners and to
other digitisation centres of competence
Training 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
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17. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Extension with new partners 1
Objectives:
Adding European language partners to implement IMPACT language tools for their
language
Adding content holders from these language areas to share experience in mass
digitisation, demonstrate IMPACT strategic tools
Test and demonstrate IMPACT language independent tools
Support training and dissemination in these new languages
• Entry new partners from January 2010
Current languages in IMPACT: English, German, Dutch
All three Germanic languages
To be added partners from Southern and Eastern Europe
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18. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Extension with new partners 2
First 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): Enlarged
European Union
Up to six partners from countries that recently entered the EU
Currently working on proposal with partners from Slovenia, Bulgaria and Czech Republic
Extra option for working with Croatia
In 2010 consortium will be extended with up to 12 partners
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19. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Towards a sustainable Centre of Competence 1
Achieved 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
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20. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Towards a sustainable Centre of Competence 2
To be realised in 2010-2011
Kick off series of local events for dissemination and training
Building out of virtual channels: e.g. registry/repository of ground truth
Extension of the IMPACT community on the web and in the world
Business model of sustainable Centre defined
tangible commitment of all partners secured
Resources for continuation
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21. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
IMPACT vision for 2012
In 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 from
digitisation 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.
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22. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
More information
about the
IMPACT project:
www.impact-project.eu
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23. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Thank you!
Questions? Join the project mailing list?
Project Office: impact@kb.nl
Telephone: + 31 70 314 0958
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