Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR)
Historical archive material is now made available within the National Archives of Sweden with the help of techniques for Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR).
Updates
February 28, 2022: Report books for 1872 and 1885 from the Gothenburg Police Chamber as well as incoming and outgoing telegrams 1883–1885 are now searchable.
December 13, 2021: Another report book (1868) from the Gothenburg Police Chamber and incoming and outgoing telegrams 1885–1888 are now searchable.
November 22, 2021: Report book for 1890 and incoming and outgoing telegrams from the Gothenburg Police Chamber 1893–1897 are now searchable.
September 7, 2021: Another report book (1869) and incoming and outgoing telegrams from the Gothenburg Police Chamber 1880–1882 are searchable.
June 23, 2021: Two more report books (1893 and 1895) from the Gothenburg Police Chamber are searchable.
January 28, 2021: First version of full text search (demo) up and running. So far 6 volumes have been added.
Full text search
A search service (demo) is available at: https://transkribus.eu/r/archives-sweden/
Archives included
So far, parts from two archive materials are searchable:
Gothenburg Police Chamber: Detective Department's report books 1868–1902
The detective department of the Gothenburg Police was established in the 1850s and had the task of conducting investigations as non-uniformed police officers. From 1868, the department got a permanent staff group and then they started keeping so-called "Report books" which contain copies of all outgoing reports from the department. The report books from 1868 to 1902 as well as incoming and outgoing telegrams to the department 1865–1903 will be searchable in free text here with the help of automated handwriting interpretation and citizen research. Currently, the following archive materials are avaible:
- The Gothenburg detectives' books, years 1868, 1869, 1872, 1880, 1885, 1888, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1895 and 1896
- Poor care reports, years 1893–1900
- Telegrams, years 1880–1888 and 1893–1897.
The rest of the suite will be available during the spring of 2022.
In a citizen science project, knowledgeable participants from the general public have transcribed reports to create training data for the automatic interpretation, as well as proofread and corrected the automatically interpreted police reports. The work with the report books is financed by and carried out in collaboration with GPS400: Center for Collaborative Visual Research at the University of Gothenburg.
The National Land Survey, Renovationsarkivet: Geometrical maps
This series of map books refers to the 17th century large-scale maps of Sweden's villages and farms. The entire collection of about 15,000 maps has previously been digitized and transcribed within the framework of the projects Older and Younger Geometrical Maps at the National Archives, funded by Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The entire collection, which also includes maps from other archives, is available here: https://riksarkivet.se/visa-kartsamlingar.
The HTR project
HTR is an ongoing activity within the National Archives' Research and Development. The foundation was laid in a project 2020–2021 in collaboration with READ-COOP SCE with funding from Vinnova. Read more about the project at: https://riksarkivet.se/htr.
Interested in knowing more? Contact us:
Karl-Magnus Johansson, e-mail: karl-magnus.Johansson[at]riksarkivet.se