1. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Overview of the IMPACT Project
IMPACT Workshop, 7th May 2010, Bratislava
Aly Conteh, British Library

2. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Background
 Text that is not digital is virtually invisible
 Digitised material is becoming available too slowly, in too small quantities and from
too few sources
 OCR (optical character recognition) technology does not produce satisfactory
results for historical documents
 There is a lack of institutional knowledge and expertise which causes inefficiency
and ‘re-inventing the wheel’
Aly Conteh, British Library 2

3. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
OBJECTIVES
Significantly improve mass digitisation of historical printed text by
 Innovating OCR software and language technology
 Sharing expertise and building capacity across Europe
 Ensuring that tools and services will be sustained after the end of the project
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4. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
The IMPACT Consortium - Original
 Libraries  Universities & Research centres
– National Library of the Netherlands (KB) – Dutch Institute for Lexicology (INL)
– The British Library (BL) – National Centre for Scientific Research –
– Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) Demokritos (NCSR)
– German National Library (DNB) – University of Salford (USAL)
– Bavarian State Library (BSB) – University of Munich (CIS group)
– Göttingen State and University Library – University of Innsbruck (InfMath group)
(UGOE) – University of Bath (UKOLN)
– Austrian National Library (ONB)
– University of Innsbruck Library (UIBK)  Industry partners
– IBM (Haifa Research Lab)
– ABBYY (Moscow)
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5. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
IMPACT Extension: objectives
 To demonstrate the IMPACT tools for efficient lexicon building for language families
outside the current IMPACT focus
→ Currently in IMPACT three Germanic languages : English, German, Dutch
→ Add Romance and Slavic languages
 To demonstrate and disseminate project results in Southern and Eastern Europe,
and support building capacity in digitisation in these countries
 To reinforce cooperation and better exploitation of ICT R&D synergies across the
enlarged European Union
 To build strategic partnerships with aim of gaining access to knowledge, developing
standards and interoperable solutions
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6. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Extention in two iterations:
1. Second phase, foreseen in original IMPACT contract
→ 3 languages: French, Spanish, Polish
→ 5 partners (entry 1 february 2010)
2. Proposal in Objective ICT-2009.9.5 , call 5 of FP7: Enlarged European Union
→ 3 languages: Slovene, Bulgarian and Czech
→ 6 partners (entry 1 april 2010)
 All will be equal partners in consortium
 Full integration expected in June 2010
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7. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
New partners identified: second phase
22 Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française ATILF FR
23 Biblioteca Nacional de España BNE ES
24 Fundación Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes BVC ES
25 Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center PSNC PL
26 University of Warsaw, Department of Formal Linguistics UW DFL PL
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8. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
New partners identified – IMPACT enlarged EU
16 Institute for Parallel Processing, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences BAS BG
17 “St. Cyril and Methodius” National Library NLB BG
18 Jožef Stefan Institute JSI SI
19 Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica (National and University Library) NUK SI
20 Institute of the Czech National Corpus, Charles University Prague CUP CZ
21 Národní knihovna České republiky (National Library of the Czech Republic) NKC CZ
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9. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
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10. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Facts and figures
 Project supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work
Programme.
 coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands (KB)
 Project type: Large-scale Integrating Project
 EU funding: € 11 500 000
 Start date: 1 January 2008
 Duration: 48 months
 From 2012: sustainable Centre of Competence
 Contact: impact@kb.nl
 Web site: www.impact-project.eu
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11. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Project Structure
OPERATIONAL CONTEXT
Requirements, Benchmarking and Metrics
Best Practices and Guidelines
Technical Framework and Technical Integration
TEXT RECOGNITION ENHANCEMENT & ENRICHMENT
Pre-processing and segmentation Collaborative correction
Adaptive and experimental OCR Lexicons and gazetteers
Models and dictionaries Structural metadata
CAPACITY BUILDING
Published resources
Training and support
Demonstration
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12. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Tools for Text Recognition (OCR)
Technologies for the extraction of text in a digital form from the page
 Adaptive OCR engine: Core of IMPACT, cutting-edge software system which is tailored
specifically to the needs of libraries adapts itself to the material during OCR process,
integrating several other tools:
 Image enhancement toolkit
 Segmentation toolkit
 Post-correction modules
 Other OCR engines
 Experimental prototypes and tools
 Typewritten OCR prototype
 Wordspotting engine
 Inventory extraction prototype
OC
TR EE
CB
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13. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Tools for Enrichment (language technology)
Make the OCR results more accurate and more accessible
 Collaborative correction
Full web-based collaborative correction system: web-based platform, suitable for massive volunteer
participation, validates and corrects OCR results. first tool of its kind to be directly linked to an OCR
engine
 Lexicons and gazetteers
 General and Named Entities lexica for Dutch, German and English as well as support for lexicon
development in other European languages
 Toolboxes providing the means to overcome the historical language barrier
 Collaborative web-based workspace for named entity management
 Structural metadata
Functional Extension Parser: a set of web services that can be exploited to automatically detect and tag
structural metadata of scanned material
OC
TR EE
CB
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14. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Strategic tools and services
 Web site provides access to all project outputs and forms the nucleus of a virtual network of all European digitisation
centres of competence and associated research activities
 A set of Decision Support Tools that can be used to initiate, organise, manage and cost mass
digitisation projects
 A learning resource toolbox will contain operational guidelines, providing guidance on real world
implementation of all tools produced within the project.
 Training and support
 Help Desk system that brokers end-user requests to project partners and to other digitisation centres of
competence.
 Training programme dealing with large-scale digitisation issues and technologies, with a range of supporting
documentation made available through the project website
 Demonstration
OC
TR EE
CB
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15. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Building a sustainable Centre of Competence
 First Phase 2008: IMPACT core consortium of 15 partners
 Good mix of public and private partners
 Experience in mass digitisation and research in OCR, Language and Image processing
 Second Phase 2010: extension with 11 additional partners
 Public collection holders and language institutes
 Adding wider set of European languages and experience in mass digitisation
 Third Phase 2011: Open to all partners
 Other Centres of Competence
 Digitisation Suppliers
 Research Institutes
 Libraries, Archives and Museums
By 2012 IMPACT exists as a sustainable Centre of Competence
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16. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
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17. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
http://www.impact-project.eu
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18. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Twitter: impactocr Blog: impactocr.wordpress.com
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19. IMPACT is supported by the European Community under the FP7 ICT Work Programme. The project is coordinated by the National Library of the Netherlands.
Thank you
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