(A) Description of the Training School

Key information

  • Dates: Monday April 16 (all day)  to Tuesday April 17, 2018 (all day)
  • Location: University of Würzburg, Germany
  • Local organizer: Leonard Konle (leonard.konle@uni-wuerzburg.de) and Fotis Jannidis
  • Contact persons: Carolin Odebrecht (carolin.odebrecht@hu-berlin.de), Christof Schöch (schoech@uni-trier.de)
  • Trainers: Christian Reul, Leonard Konle, Lou Burnard
  • Background information: https://github.com/distantreading/WG1/wiki

Training School theme

This Training School is about Optical Character Recognition and Text Encoding for the production of ELTeC (European Literary Text Collection) contributions. The ELTeC will contain a principled sample of European literary production, containing the full text of novels in each of many European languages published between 1850 and 1920.

The aim of the Training School is to enable a group of Action participants to go from a novel in the form of a scanned book to a TEI-encoded full-text version of the novel. The target audience are researchers from participating countries interested in contributing texts to the ELTeC but who need to digitize texts for this purpose and who are insufficiently familiar with the practicalities of Optical Character Recognition for full-text generation and with the fundamentals of using the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative to do so.

All participants are expected to attend both days of the Training School.

Programme outline

Monday, April 16

  • Welcome to all participants
  • Morning Session: Using FineReader for OCR
  • Afternoon Session: OCR challenges and advanced OCR tools
  • Dinner in town

Tuesday, April 17

  • Morning Session: An introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative and to the ELTeC encoding principles
  • Afternoon Session: Practical Work on converting texts from OCR output to XML-TEI and on encoding texts for the ELTeC

Call for Applications: Grants for participation in the Training School

The COST Action “Distant Reading for European Literary History” is offering a number of grants for participation in the Training School on “Optical Character Recognition and Text Encoding for ELTeC contributions”, to take place on April 16-17, 2018 at the University of Würzburg in Germany.

What to expect

Our COST Action is offering grants for participation in this Training School. Grant amounts generally attempt to cover substantial parts of the cost incurred by participants for their trip and for accommodation in Würzburg.

How to apply

To apply for one of the grants, please do the following things before March 22, 2018:

  • Register a profile on e-COST and include your bank data there
  • Send the following documents to Roxana Patras (email: roxana.patras@yahoo.ro) and Christof Schöch (schoech@uni-trier.de):
    • A one-page Curriculum Vitae
    • A one-page motivation letter on why you would like to attend the Training School. Your letter should include information about your current level of knowledge and experience in creating digital texts and in using digital tools. Please also tell us about any texts you believe you could contribute to the ELTeC
    • A realistic but economical estimate of your travel costs from your home institution to University of Würzburg and back

Selection criteria

Applicants will be notified of their acceptance before April 1, 2018.

  • Basic COST eligibility criteria need to be met
  • Applicants who have specific plans to contribute relevant texts to the ELTeC are prioritised over other applicants (rank 1)
  • Applicants who are early career researchers (including doctoral researchers) and applicants from COST Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITC) are prioritised over other applicants (rank 2)
  • Insofar as is allowable by the applications received and the selection criteria above, representation across as many COST countries as possible and a gender balance should be observed among the grantees (rank 3)
  • Where all the above criteria are satisfied, places are offered on a first come, first served basis (rank 4)