Dr Rachael Griffiths and Dr Marieke Meelen led a successful workshop on Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) at Trinity Hall last November. The event was funded by Cambridge Language Sciences, following an open call for workshops to promote the sharing of research methods between disciplines.
Over the course of the day, participants from History, Anglo-Saxon Norse & Celtic, English, Cambridge Libraries, Cambridge Digital Humanities, Divinity, and Modern & Medieval Languages gained substantive technical knowledge about HTR processes and the functionality of Transkribus software Three teacher-led sessions provided step-by-step guidance on navigating the various stages of the HTR workflow from beginning to end. This was combined with sessions offering hands-on experience and expert guidance.
Many of the workshop participants expressed confidence in navigating Transkribus by the end of the workshop. In their feedback they also commented on the value of receiving individualised support during the hands-on sessions, and the benefits of discussing HTR with scholars from different fields during the networking sessions.
"The workshop was extremely useful, providing a strong practical introduction to the basics of Transkribus, as well as some understanding of the structure of a project using HTR. It was great to be able to discuss HTR with scholars from different fields. The slides will be a great resource for future reference. The venue and food were wonderful. Thank you again!"
Researcher interest far outstripped the number of places available, with over 60 expressions of interest. The organisers believe this indicates a significant level of demand for training on HTR and intend to seek funding to deliver further workshops on this topic.
Some material from the workshop will be added to the resources section on the Language Sciences website soon.
The next event supported by the Language Sciences Workshop Fund will be on neural modelling techniques, co-organised by Alexis Deighton-McIntyre and Jérémy Giroud at the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit.
The next call for workshop funding will be announced soon.