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.
Workflow Development for OCR
(and beyond)
Clemens Neudecker, KB National Library of the Netherlands
Creating and Communicating Digital Content Conference
Umea, 26 May 2011

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.
IMPACT – Improving access to text
 Funded by the EC as part of the 7th Framework Programme
 Coordinated by KB – National Library of the Netherlands
 EU funding: € 12 100 000
 26 partners: Libraries, Research Institutes, Industry Partners
 Start date: 1 January 2008
 Duration: 48 Months  2012: Centre of Competence
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 Project website: www.impact-project.eu
 IMPACT blog: http://impactocr.wordpress.com/
 Twitter: @impactocr, #impactproject
 Join us on LinkedIn!

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.
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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.
OCR: A multitude of challenges…
I. OCR challenges (gothic fonts, bleed-through, warping, etc.)
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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.
OCR: A multitude of challenges…
II. Language challenges (spelling variants, inflection, and many more!)
Example: historical variants of the Dutch word ‘wereld’ (world):
werelt weerelt wereld weerelds wereldt werelden weereld werrelts waerelds weerlyt
wereldts vveerelts waereld weerelden waerelden weerlt werlt werelds sweerels
zwerlys swarels swerelts werelts swerrels weirelts tsweerelds werret vverelt werlts
werrelt worreld werlden wareld weirelt weireld waerelt werreld werld vvereld weerelts
werlde tswerels werreldts weereldt wereldje waereldje weurlt wald weëled
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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.
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And a multitude of solutions!
 22 different ‘tools’ from diverse WP’s,
developers:
OCR (C++, C#),
Image Processing & Lexica (DLL),
Command Line Tools (Win/Linux),
Java, Ruby, PHP, Perl, etc.
+ 3rd party software!
“One ring to rule them all...”
 IMPACT Interoperability Framework (IIF)

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.
Requirement: Interoperability Framework
 Interoperability vs. integration
 Web based vs. local installation/platform
 Most important: flexible, scalable, user friendly
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 Java 6
 Apache Axis2
 Apache Tomcat
 Apache Synapse (optional)
 Taverna Workflow Engine

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.
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Generic Web Service Wrapper
Only requirement: Command Line Application  HTML form
Available on OPFlabs:
https://github.com/openplanets/scape/tree/master/xa-toolwrapper
 Minimise integration effort: developers can focus on their
application and have to worry less about integration =
higher quality software

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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Service Oriented Architecture
 Java as programming
language = platform
independence
 Standard Apache
components = easy to
maintain, well supported
 Synapse as enterprise
service bus = load
balancing & fail over
 HTTPS encryption &
authentication = secure
 Minimise deployment effort: scalability, hot deployment/update

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.
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Workflow development
 OCR workflow =
data pipeline
 Building blocks =
processing steps (nodes)
 Integration =
interaction between nodes
(mashup)
 Maximise usability

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.
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Workflow management
 Web 2.0 style registry: myExperiment
 Local client: Taverna Workbench
 Web client: project website

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.
Workflow registry
 Share resources and
experience
 Rate/tag/comment
workflows
 Organised in groups

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.
Workflow modules
 “Basic” workflows = wraps exactly one software tool/web service
 Documented inputs/outputs

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.
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Complex workflows
 Tool/data pipeline
 Easily derived from
workflow modules
 Task/goal oriented
 Reusable

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.
Local client: Taverna Workbench
http://www.taverna.org.uk/
 Background:
BioSciences
 Developed and
maintained by
myGrid, UK
 Available for
Windows/Linux/OSX
and as open source
 Funding secured
until 2014

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.
Web client: Taverna Server/
Workflow Parser
 SOAP/REST API
 Remote execution of workflows (webapp)

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.
Use case: Workflows for Evaluation
 Tool A vs Tool B (Tool A(v1) vs Tool A(v2))
 Workflow X (Tool A + Tool B) vs Workflow Y (Tool A + Tool C)
 Workflow X vs previously digitised material
 Users identify optimal workflow for source material/project
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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.
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Other examples
 Workflows for Digitisation  IMPACT
 Workflows for Linguistic Analysis  CLARIN
 Workflows for Preservation  SCAPE
 Interface for automatic storage of results, based on DAV,
realised as a workflow module (native beanshell support)
 And there are many more…

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.
Benefits & Outlook
 Modular
 Transparent
 Expandable
 Scalable
 Platform independent
 User friendly
 Growing interest in workflow management in CH sector
 Easy to set up, deploy, free (open source)
 Domain independent

20. 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! Questions?