The Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents (READ) project is focused on making archival material more accessible through the use of cutting-edge technologies. Building on research undertaken by the tranScriptorium project (http://transcriptorium.eu/), the READ project will set new standards in Handwritten Text Recognition, Key Word Spotting, Layout Analysis, Automatic Writer Identification and related fields.

The core objective of READ is to provide a service platform (http://transkribus.eu) for the automated recognition, transcription and searching of historical documents. Training computers to read handwritten text in this way promises to revolutionise access to the written records of our history.