Recognising Astrid Lindgren's Shorthand Manuscripts

Raphaela Heil will present her recently defended PhD thesis in computer science, developing handwritten text recognition models to transcribe and "translate" the shorthand manuscripts of Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren. 

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About 

Raphaela Heil
Photo: Raphaela Heil ©

Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren wrote and edited her drafts primarily in stenography or shorthand, an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases the speed and brevity of writing. Due to this – often very personal – writing style, her manuscripts have long been considered indecipherable. By combining expert crowdsourcing and document image analysis, the digital humanities project "The Astrid Lindgren Code" (Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation grant, 2020-2023) has demonstrated that both humans and machines can – to varying degrees – transliterate and recognise Lindgren's enigmatic handwriting.

In this talk, Raphaela Heil, PhD, will provide a general overview of the project and introduce the material, stenography, and their respective challenges. Afterwards, she will give an in-depth presentation of the project's efforts in applying handwritten text recognition to stenography, summarised in her dissertation. Finally, she will discuss some of their latest results, acquired since the beginning of the year.

Image contains handwriting in short hand by author Astrid Lindgren.
Astrid Lindgren's stenographic manuscripts. Page detail. From: Raphaela Heil: Document Image Processing for Handwritten Text Recognition. Uppsala 2023.

Read more about Raphaela Heil's project on the University of Uppsala's website. 

Programme

13:15 - 14:00    Keynote presentation

14:15 - 15:00    Mingle

Register

Register for the event here.

Victuals 

We will serve hot and cold beverages & nibbles. 

About BærUt!

BærUt! is a competence hub at the University of Oslo for promoting digital scholarly editions (DSEs). Our ambition is to consolidate expertise and knowledge in the field, gather researchers and practitioners, and, in the long run, create the foundation for a common platform for digital editions. We work closely with researchers, developers, and cultural institutions to digitize historical and cultural text documents and ensure these resources are accessible and useful for academic use.

Read more about BærUt! here. 

Questions?

Send an email to the project leader, Annika Rockenberger.

 

Published Feb. 29, 2024 10:55 AM - Last modified Feb. 29, 2024 10:55 AM