Succeed Project
In the years 2013-2014 the Wroclaw University Library participated, as a subcontractor, in the European research project Succeed (Support Action Centre of Competence in Digitisation - https://www.digitisation.eu/), the purpose of which was to promote research and validation of the results in the field of mass digitization, with particular emphasis on text resources.
Our library, which is a member of the Centre of Competence in Digitization - IMPACT, was invited to participate in the project by members of the Succeed Consortium as an entity having its own notable achievements in the field of digitization, i.e. many years of experience, highly skilled professionals, good base of hardware and tangible results of work including Digital Library of Wroclaw University, WUL’s E-Publishing, Portal "Cultural Heritage in WUL’s studies" and other services available through its website www.bu.uni.wroc.pl.
As a part of the project, the team from WUL tested two programming tools (Scan Tailor software - a program for processing scanned files and Tesseract OCR software - open source software to perform optical character recognition), checking the possibility of their use to accelerate and optimize some of the processes within the organization of work with processes associated with the digitization of selected library’s items, production and processing of scans and their preparation for presentation in the Digital Library of Wroclaw University (DLUW).
Results of the tests will be used in the WUL and will influence the reduction of costs and increase of efficiency of processes relating to the preparation of digital resources for the Digital Library of University of Wroclaw. Moreover, tests carried out on Scan Tailor and Tesseract software are very important for the preparation and organization of the technological line designed to process data in the cloud. It is now necessary to develop procedures and interfaces that will enable for the personnel to remotely manage processes. Configuring the digitization process in the cloud can also allow for integration with other workstations dedicated for digital image acquisition (e.g. scanners, digital cameras) and presentation system (i.e. DLUW) as well as with arrays designed for data archiving.
For achievements in researches conducted as part of the Succeed Project and for the implementation of the developed solutions essential for optimization of the digitization processes - The Wroclaw University Library was awarded honorable mention at the final conference of Succeed Project in Paris at the National Library of France (28.11.2014).