Library improves access to historical texts through technology innovation

Munich, Germany (19th September 2013) — ABBYY Europe, a leading provider of document recognition, document capture, and linguistic technologies and services, today announced the Danish Royal Library is currently using ABBYY Recognition Server to digitise their collections. ABBYY provides Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software and expertise in recognising historic fonts, which helps to transform Europe’s printed heritage into digitally available resources.

ABBYY offers products equipped with the most advanced text recognition technology for printed historic documents. ABBYY has a long experience in developing OCR software, particularly for libraries and universities in Europe that often have the added challenge of dealing with old texts and historic fonts, such as Fraktur and Gothic.  Starting in 2008, ABBYY participated in the European Commission’s IMPACT project. The consortium brought together twenty-six European national and regional libraries, research institutions and technology partners to share knowledge and best practices, developing innovative tools to enhance the capabilities of OCR engines. ABBYY played a key role in the IMPACT project by providing state-of-the-art OCR technology and expertise for digitising historic fonts and extracting text from old documents.

“For our work we needed OCR software with advanced features that could satisfactorily transform scanned pages into full text or XML, particularly when it came to old books, magazines and newspapers,” said Hamid Mehrabi at the Danish Royal Library. “We chose ABBYY Recognition Server for the cutting-edge OCR technology which enables us to process documents of often poor quality much more efficiently. And we know we can rely on this collaboration, as ABBYY is continuously working closely with libraries and the other partners to improve the core technology.”

“Digitisation not only can help preserve European intellectual and cultural heritage for future generations. It can also unlock and make those treasures available for millions of researchers, students and regular readers around the globe,” explained Bodo Wagener, Vice President of Sales and Services at ABBYY Europe. “ABBYY is excited to contribute to this worthwhile goal at the Danish Royal Library and we appreciate the close and productive collaboration with people who are just as enthusiastic about text recognition as ourselves.”

For more information on ABBYY OCR technology for recognising historical texts visit http://www.frakturschrift.com.