A collaborative approach: READ-COOP and the Europeana Foundation join forces to enhance the Transcribathon platform - READ-COOP | 15 March 2023

"...The original Transcribathon platform, which was created in 2016, was a pure transcription editor. Volunteers could manually transcribe text using their computer, but no automatic transcriptions were possible. In 2021, Europeana decided to update the platform with handwriting recognition software. ...The easiest way to create a new digital platform is to base it on something that already exists, and that is exactly what Europeana did. READ-COOP already had a functioning platform for the transcription and enrichment of historical documents (Transkribus) and a way for other platforms to communicate directly with Transkribus (the metagrapho API). This would form the basis of the new Transcribathon platform....Using an existing API in this way meant the Europeana team didn’t have to build their own text recognition system from scratch. They simply had to build a platform that the metagrapho API could interact with, enabling them to access the technology in the main Transkribus platform. This meant that Transkribus’ text recognition technology could be integrated into the platform quite quickly, without too much costly development...."