By Rob O'Brien
A stay-at-home mum with a special interest in family history and a retired couple keen on shipping are among the six people to be honoured for correcting millions of lines of text online in the National Library of Australia’s Newspaper Digitisation Program.
The top text correctors, who have made the program’s Hall of Fame - Julie Hempenstall (Victoria), Maurie and Lyn Mulcahy (Queensland), Fay Walker (Queensland), John Hall (Victoria) and Ann Manley (NSW) – will be presented with special Australia Day awards today for their efforts during a special presentation in the National Library Theatre.
The National Library’s newspaper digitisation program began two years ago, using Optical Character Recognition software to automatically convert old newspaper images into digital text.
Although this is the latest technology, the small fonts and uneven printing of many of the newspaper pages made conversion difficult and not always accurate.
The innovative process used by the National Library to correct copy - by mobilising thousands of dedicated online volunteers - was hailed as an example of best practice in 'crowd sourcing'.
Overall, more than 5000 online users – with some spending up to 45 hours a week - corrected text for the project. The top correctors will be presented with the special awards.
Manager of the Australian Newspaper Service at the National Library, Rose Holley, said the correctors’ work was an invaluable service to the community.
“Their contribution and dedication to this project is simply remarkable,” Ms Holley said. “They have really gone the extra mile.”
The program, which is run in conjunction with state and territory libraries, digitises historic Australian newspapers from 1803 up to 1954 when copyright began.
The digitised images and text are then made available to everyone via the Web. The millionth newspaper page went public on 14 December 2009, with that page - a 1901 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald - containing the 10 millionth article to be digitised.
A stay-at-home mum with a special interest in family history and a retired couple keen on shipping are among the six people to be honoured for correcting millions of lines of text online in the National Library of Australia’s Newspaper Digitisation Program.
The top text correctors, who have made the program’s Hall of Fame - Julie Hempenstall (Victoria), Maurie and Lyn Mulcahy (Queensland), Fay Walker (Queensland), John Hall (Victoria) and Ann Manley (NSW) – will be presented with special Australia Day awards today for their efforts during a special presentation in the National Library Theatre.
The National Library’s newspaper digitisation program began two years ago, using Optical Character Recognition software to automatically convert old newspaper images into digital text.
Although this is the latest technology, the small fonts and uneven printing of many of the newspaper pages made conversion difficult and not always accurate.
The innovative process used by the National Library to correct copy - by mobilising thousands of dedicated online volunteers - was hailed as an example of best practice in 'crowd sourcing'.
Overall, more than 5000 online users – with some spending up to 45 hours a week - corrected text for the project. The top correctors will be presented with the special awards.
Manager of the Australian Newspaper Service at the National Library, Rose Holley, said the correctors’ work was an invaluable service to the community.
“Their contribution and dedication to this project is simply remarkable,” Ms Holley said. “They have really gone the extra mile.”
The program, which is run in conjunction with state and territory libraries, digitises historic Australian newspapers from 1803 up to 1954 when copyright began.
The digitised images and text are then made available to everyone via the Web. The millionth newspaper page went public on 14 December 2009, with that page - a 1901 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald - containing the 10 millionth article to be digitised.
It is expected 40 million articles will be available via the program by June 2011.
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