Objective
This project aims to provide the first viable and accurate solution for digitising early printed books in Latin using Optical Character Recognition. Our basic OCR package will be free and open-source, in order to ensure affordability, longevity, and openness for improvement (three failures of our commercial competitors). Our Company Limited by Guarantee will market costumisation, training, support, and further development tailored to specific collections of books (the standard failure of open-source solutions). Customisation services are essential in our market. Early printed Latin cannot be successfully digitised using standard OCR packages (whether open-source or commercial): these currently have an accuracy of no more than 15%. We plan to modify the open-source Tesseract engine, by training it to account for Latin grammar and early typography: this will increase its accuracy of recognition to about 80%. Customisation tailored to specific collections of books will further improve accuracy to about 95% to 98%.
Our company will address the needs of libraries, digital publishers, researchers, learned societies, and private collectors of early books. Our commercialisation plan is modelled on that of other successful businesses based on open-source software.
The demand for Latin OCR is strong, as publishers and libraries switch to digital publication and storage. From the invention of printing in the Renaissance until well into the 19th century, Latin was the European language of every intellectual discourse: the natural sciences, mathematics, philosophy, theology, law, literary criticism, geography, archaeology, music, medicine. The subsequent shift to using the vernacular languages was a seismic event. We are now experiencing a revolution of similar proportions: the advent of digital publication is bringing opportunities and risks whose outlines are still unclear. This project aims to offer a solid technical bridge between the digital future and the Latin past.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences political sciences political transitions revolutions
- humanities languages and literature literature studies literary theory literary criticism
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
- social sciences law
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2014-PoC
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
DH1 3LE DURHAM
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.