Monk [Dutch]

The Monk system is developed at the University of of Groningen by a research group under supervision by prof. dr. Lambert Schomaker. In cooperation with the Dutch National Archive we have created methods for accessing historical archive collections which are difficult to process by traditional OCR methods, for example due to their historical character types or due to the fact that the material is handwritten. The system consists of two major components: (1) a setup for the storage and web-based annotation of scanned page images and parts thereof; (2) a set of (handwriting and text) recognition algorithms as well as retrieval and search methods.

Try our [Monk search engine]

An example hit list is here.

Accessible books

From the Archief van het Kabinet der Koningin, 1898-1945, Periode 1814-1988 (totale omvang 598 meter; 4660 inventarisnummers)
the book: Indices op het verbaal, boek 7823, 1903, bladz. 1-1040
From Alg. Rijksarch. 1e Afd. Admiraliteitscolleges
Nr. 1177, Journaal, beginnend 7 Sept. 1779, Capiteyn J.J. van Hoeij, [... s'Lands Schip van Oorloge Rotterdam, 50 stukken canon en 300 manschappen ...] (272 pages)
To the internal project site with demos, annotation and search tools for handwritten or historical manuscripts. Please contact me for obtaining access to this site. Volunteers who can read Dutch or Latin are invited to participate in transcription and annotation.
There is also a static index of Monk's KdK collection.
In the summer of 2010, we have ingested two different 15th century texts, on from Belgium (Schepenbank, Stadsarchief Leuven) and one from the archives of the province of Gelderland, with good success. This broadens the applicability of our algorithms, without any change to the basic methods. For each new collection, some customized layout analysis is needed, after which the scans enter into a generic pipeline and are exposed to the web.

This web site is made possible thanks to grants by the Nederlandse Organisatie van Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), project NWO/Catch "Scratch" and project NWO/EW "Learning to learn", project SNN/Target, Groningen, thanks to the Nationaal Archief, The Hague (dhr. H. van Schie) and a continuous support from the University of Groningen.

People

The following people have contributed to Monk since 2004: Lambert Schomaker, Henny van Schie, Marius Bulacu, Tijn van der Zant, Sveta Zinger, Fons Laan, Jean-Paul van Oosten.

The following annotators have produced substantial amounts of line transcriptions, word and character labels: J.A. Schomaker, H. van Schie, F. Laan, L. Schomaker, S. Zinger and several anonymous volunteers.

schomaker with-affiliation ai.rug.nl