[BCMA] Handwritten Text Recognition recommendations?

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv]

Hello museum friends!

Hope you are doing fantastic, and that you survived the summer busyness 
☀️

We are working with the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club on the digitization of 
a large collection of mountain cabin guestbooks from Tetrahedron Park. 
These guest books contain handwritten messages from people who have 
stayed at each cabin, touching on weather conditions, funny anecdotes, 
and messages to future cabin guests.

Has anyone worked with handwritten text recognition (HTR) scanning 
software in the digitization of archival documents? In an ideal world, 
we would love to digitize these guestbooks and allow users to search for 
familiar names in the scanned documents, but HTR technology is new to 
us.

Anyone have any tips or recommendations on software/hardware to explore?

Thanks!


Matthew Lovegrove (he/him) | Curator/Manager
Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
716 Winn Road  PO Box 766, Gibsons, BC V0N 1V0
Tel: 604-886-8232 | Web: sunshinecoastmuseum.ca 
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We are situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of 
the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation)
Much of our work takes place in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded 
territory of the shíshálh (Sechelt Nation)
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