White Paper: Optimizing OCR Accuracy on Older Documents

I received a question about OCR, which led me to find this document revised in 2006 and published by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO):

Optimizing OCR Accuracy on Older Documents: A Study of Scan Mode, File Enhancement, and Software Products, by Jon M. Booth and Jeremy Gelb, Revised June 2006 (v.2)

This document is technical and not an overview of OCR, so it is not for everyone. The conclusions, though, are interesting:

1. Older and discolored documents must be scanned in RGB mode to capture all the image data, and to maximize OCR accuracy.
2. The character accuracy produced by scanning older documents in RGB mode meets (GPO’s meeting of the experts) 99% OCR accuracy requirement, even without applying file enhancement.
3. No single type of file enhancement, applied individually, improves character recognition rates forOCR.
4. Specifically, the Downsampling enhancement type does not improve character recognition rates, despite OCR software manufacturers’ claims that a 300 dpi is optimal for recognition rates.

In conclusion, the combination of these facts demonstrate that file enhancement is not needed, because the recognition rates are already at an acceptable level, and more importantly, it does not improve the character recognition rates for OCR.

What is amazing is that they did achieve 98-99% without -- seemingly -- much fuss.

---

Technorati tag: OCR

Press Release: CLOCKSS Works

This press release below caught my eye. Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) is a strategy that has been developed by the Stanford University Libraries Program and it is in its 10th year. Controlled LOCKSS (CLOCKSS) is:

a partnership of libraries and publishers committed to ensuring long-term access to scholarly work in digital format. As more and more content moves online, there is growing concern that this digital content may not always be available. CLOCKSS addresses this problem by creating a secure, multi-sited archive of web-published content that can be tapped into as necessary to provide ongoing access to researchers worldwide *for free*.

The pilot project will conclude later in 2008 and CLOCKSS will go into full production mode.

There is a nice table comparing LOCKSS and CLOCKSS here. [Modified 2/6/2008 to point to an updated table.]

For other mentions of LOCKSS in Digitization 101, go here.

---

Press Release: CLOCKSS Works

Researchers increasingly access journal articles online, but the real possibility exists that, due to natural disaster or human/computing failure, digital content might not always be available. Libraries and publishers have joined forces in an initiative called CLOCKSS*, providing leadership and the supporting technology, to ensure reliable, long-term access to scholarly e-content.

The moment has arrived to see how CLOCKSS works.

As of today, the web-published content of the journal Graft: Organ and Cell Transplantation (SAGE Publications) has been exported from the CLOCKSS archive, and is now available to the world from two CLOCKSS hosting platforms at universities in Europe and the US. Released under a Creative Commons license, this content is free to researchers, students and the general public, without need of any subscription.

CLOCKSS is a trusted and secure dark archive, preserving scholarly journal content from the world’s leading publishers. The CLOCKSS system is based on geographically-dispersed nodes located at major research libraries into which e-journal content from publishers is routinely ingested. Archived copies remain "dark" (hidden, secure and unavailable for use), until a trigger event and the CLOCKSS Board votes to "light up" the content and restore access to it again via a hosting platform. At present there are seven archive nodes and two hosting platforms. These numbers are expected to double in order to achieve added security from global coverage.

SAGE Publications is one of 11 premier publishers (together accounting for about 60% of e-journal content) participating in the CLOCKSS Pilot and serving on the CLOCKSS Board. When SAGE announced that it was discontinuing Graft, this became the first real-world test for the CLOCKSS system and its procedures: the CLOCKSS Board, comprising both publishers and library organizations, determined that a trigger event had occurred; instruction was given for Graft content to be copied from archive nodes in the CLOCKSS network to the designated hosting platforms; and 18 issues of Graft became available to the world.

Stanford University, where the underlying LOCKSS software was developed, and the University of Edinburgh are among the seven participants on the library side, acting as stewards for the CLOCKSS system. The two universities have also been designated as CLOCKSS hosting platforms in order to demonstrate, through the release of content, how CLOCKSS works, with EDINA, the UK national data centre at Edinburgh, playing that role for Europe, and Stanford University Library doing so for the US. Both serve as points of worldwide access, free to all, without any prior subscription, fee, or registration.

To read Graft, please click here: http://www.clockss.org/clockss/Graft_Public_Copies

* CLOCKSS is transitioning from a Pilot Program to an organization for the long-term, building on the technology and findings of LOCKSS (for Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).

Additional Information about CLOCKSS

Libraries in the CLOCKSS Pilot: Indiana University, New York Public Library, OCLC, Rice University, Stanford University, University of Edinburgh, and University of Virginia

Publishers in the CLOCKSS Pilot: American Chemical Society, American Medical Association, American Physiological Society, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell

In June 2007 CLOCKSS was the inaugural winner of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Outstanding Collaboration Citation, which recognizes and encourages collaborative problem-solving efforts in the areas of acquisition, access, management, preservation or archiving of library materials. The ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

The CLOCKSS initiative is funded by participating publishers and library organizations, as well as by a grant from the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) via the US Library of Congress. The grant is intended to finance CLOCKSS through a mixture of ingest fees from publishers and revenue from an endowment raised from voluntary contributions over the next five years. The need to secure long-term sustainable funding for CLOCKSS will be one of the key strategic issues facing the Board in 2008.

This announcement forms part of the CLOCKSS campaign to engage support across the research community and help raise that endowment.

---

For information on joining the CLOCKSS initiative, please visit http://www.clockss.org or contact clockss-info (at) clockss (dot) org.

January 30, 2008
CLOCKSS
http://www.clockss.org
Stanford University Libraries
Stanford, California USA

---

Technorati tag: Digital Preservation

Blog posts on book digitization

Today I finally went back through old blog posts, located ones on book digitization, and added a label to them (book) that will allow them to be found more quickly. I did think because I do receive emails and phone calls about book digitization, and I wanted to be able to point people easily to a group of blog posts on the topic. Did I find every blog post that should be in this category? Likely not, so I'll try to find time to skim back through the blog and recategorize more posts.

BTW this did mean that I had to create a new label for "book recommendations," which might get more things added to it, too.

One of the things I learned at Internet Librarian in October 2007 is that we generally do not use enough tags (post). And although I know that I still not do use enough tags, I have to admit that it can be time-consuming, since I use both labels (a feature of Blogspot) and Technorati tags. And do you really want a ga-zillion labels (categories) on the left side of this blog?

Three old comments moderated finally

Last summer, three comments were left on blog posts here, and I found myself having to think about whether or not they should be published. In general, comments fall into two buckets -- spam and legitimate/informative -- and those are easy to moderate, but ones that make you think take time. And of course, thinking turned into procrastination. Today, that procrastination ended.

I actually did approve two of the comments and reject the third. In each case, I added a comment to the blog with an explanation. The blog posts were:

• Article: Cornell University Library becomes newest partner in Google Book Search Library Project
• Competing with Google & others
• Agreement between California Digital Library and Google

The last one is an older post from 2006, which received its comment in summer 2007, proving that older posts are still read and relevant.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, I wanted you to know that I really do think about the comments that people leave. I also wanted the commenters -- who I suspect are regular readers -- to know that I had not forgotten about their comments.

Report: Addressing the uncertain future of preserving the past. Towards a robust strategy for digital archiving and preservation

From the Digital-Preservation email list.

---

In December 2006 the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), National Library of the Netherlands, commissioned the RAND Corporation/RAND Europe to analyse KB's e-Depot strategy, following up on the positive assessment and advise of an international Evaluation Committee in 2005.

The Technical Report "Addressing the uncertain future of preserving the past. Towards a robust strategy for digital archiving and preservation" was presented on 2 November 2007, during our International Conference on Digital Preservation Tools and Trends. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek has now released a Response to the recommendations of the RAND Report. The KB aspires to implement its reponsibility towards researchers, research institutions, research libraries and publishers by consolidating its position in the international vanguard of digital preservation.

The whole text of the Report can be accessed on our website here. The Response of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek can be accessed here.

For reactions and questions, please contact Els van Eijck van Heslinga, Programme development manager International e-Depot at els.vaneijck@kb.nl

---

Technorati tag: Digital Preservation