Digitization of Medieval and Modern History of British Isles for a Leading Educational Organization Based out of London, UK

Project: XML Conversion – TEI XML Confirming to TEI P5 Standard
Industry: University Institute

History Department of a Prominent University Based out of London, UK

The online portal of one of the leading british history library digitises rare and valuable printed primary and secondary sources of medieval and modern history of British Isles. Like many digitisation projects (including Google), the client understood that digitization of manuscripts was not possible using text OCR technique as the typeface and font was not readable by modern OCR machines. Thence a more difficult and strenuous approach was to be adopted for conversion.

Client Requirements

Accredited and funded by our client, the UK-based institute, the rare and valuable printed documents containing information from Medieval and Modern History of British Isles were to be digitized and converted into XML format.
SunTec India was involved in 3rd phase of the British History digitization containing 300 Calendars of State Papers over a 12 month period (in the year 2008). The UK-based client proposed sending us 7 titles from the series per month for a period of 12 months. Each title was approximately 680 pages in length.

Key Challenges

Considering the typeface, font, and the layout of these rare titles, text conversion using OCR was not a feasible options.
The challenge was to provide a very high quality transcription (99.995%) by applying the double keying approach for digitization of rare manuscripts.

Scan, Control, & Notes files for the publication were uploaded to our ftp server. The documents were scanned to 400dpi and delivered either as greyscale or bitmap.
A client specified DTD containing detailed instructions for handling the individual typography of the book was to be followed.

Solutions

The History institute of the prominent UK-based university partnered with SunTec to convert static documents into dynamic digital content. A highly skilled workforce headed by a proficient Project Manager was put to address their online portal's conversion requirements.
SunTec pioneered an XML workflow for our UK-based educational institute and applied client specified DTD for the conversion of their titles.

The provided manuscripts were quickly and efficiently converted in accordance with TEI XML Confirming to TEI P5 Standard.
The project was successfully delivered within the specified time frame and 99.995% precision standards.

The XML output enabled simultaneous multi-channel publishing for print, online and mobile devices.

Achievements

Fuelled by SunTec India's quality, value and scalability advantages, the project was accomplished at streamlined end-to-end approach that leveraged significant economies of scale for the client.
Complete, fully searchable, and multi-platform compatible significant British History information was made available for research professionals, scholars and history associates.