View source for IDigBio Augmenting OCR Workshop

== Overview Augmenting OCR Workshop ==
*Note this page is undergoing frequent updates as the workshop approaches.
The Augmenting OCR Working Group, the iDigBio IT staff and invited guests meet October 1 - 2, 2012 in Gainesville, Florida for a 2 day intensive workshop to plan a hackathon and concurrent workshop, put together iDigBio Wiki content from collective knowledge about OCR in digitization workflows, and learn about the latest developments in OCR and NLP from all invited participants.

Karl-Heinz Steinke from Hannover, Germany and the [http://www.hs-hannover.de/forschung/forschungsschwerpunkte/herbar-digital/index.html Herbar Digital] project is our key speaker. Karl-Heinz' group has been working for the last 5 years on improving OCR algorithms for recognizing handwriting and on OCR algorithms in general as part of making digitization of herbarium specimens more efficient. See [http://www.tdwg.org/proceedings/article/view/298 Feature recognition for herbarium specimens (Herbar-Digital)] and [http://www.fakultaet2.fh-hannover.de/organisation/labore/fertigungsautomatisierung-digitale-fabrik/forschung-entwicklung/herbar-digital/herbar%20digital%202012 Herbar Digital 2012] for the latest about this project's work. 

A Hackathon for February 2013 is on our list. We're set up to head for the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) in February of 2013 to make strides in just what OCR, ML and NLP can do to make our digitization efforts more efficient in producing data faster and producing data that's fit-for-use. We'll be choosing our hackathon focus and designing the hackathon together with the iDigBio IT Staff at the upcoming October workshop.

As part of our working group's outreach efforts, we've set up participation in the upcoming iSchools Conference in Fort Worth, Texas in February 2013 where our working group is participating in three ways. We're submitting a poster, a notes paper, and hosting a half-day workshop to showcase our work and seek out potential collaborators. The iSchools 2013 theme is Data-Innovation-Wisdom which lines up perfectly with the goals of the ADBC, iDigBio and the TCNs. This conference is concurrent with our hackathon at BRIT.

== Logistics ==
*[https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/Augmenting_OCR_Logistics Find details here for lodging, meals, maps], reimbursement information, hotel shuttle details and more.

== Participants ==
*See a [http://tinyurl.com/AugmentingOCRAttendeeList list of meeting participants] including working group members, iDigBio staff, invited guests and remote participants.

== Attend Remotely ==
*Click [http://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/augmentocr/ Augment OCR] to attend remotely via Adobe Connect.
*Please sign in 15 - 20 minutes before the session of interest to learn how Adobe Connect works.

== Workshop Materials ==

*[http://tinyurl.com/AOCRAgendaOverview Conceptual Agenda]
*[http://tinyurl.com/AOCRTwoDayAgenda Agenda by Day]
*[http://tinyurl.com/OCRHackathonWishList Hackathon Topic List - "our wish list"]
*[http://tinyurl.com/AOCRpriorities A-OCR Priority Issues - Choosing Metrics to define success]

== Workshop Presentations ==

*[Karl-Heinz Steinke, Hochschule Hannover: Image analysis of herbarium specimens (Herbar-Digital)]
*[Elspeth Haston,Ron Cubey, Robin Drinkwater, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh: OCR within the digitisation workflow at RBGE]
*[Jason Best, BRIT: Demo of The Apiary Project, Walk-through and Challenges]
*[Edward Gilbert, Corinna Gries, Thomas H. Nash III, Robert Anglin, LBCC TCN: Lichens, Bryophytes and Climate Change]
*[Kimberly Watson, NYBG: Tri-Trophic Digitization: Putting the OCR in Workflow]
*[Stephen Gottschalk, NYBG: OCR implementation in The Caribbean Plants Digitization Project, a project to image and catalog over 150,000 Caribbean specimens at the New York Botanical Garden]
*[Daryl Lafferty, Arizona State University: OCR and SALIX Parsing]
*[Qianjin Zhang, Bryan Heidorn, University of Arizona: HERBIS/LABELX Demonstration - Parsing OCR Output]
*[Peter Oboyski, Phuc Nguyen, Serge Belongie, Rosemary Gillespie, Essig Museum: Digitization California Arthropod Collection- CalBug]

== Taking Notes ==
*[http://tinyurl.com/AugmentingOCRgroupNotes Workshop Meeting Notes]

== Hackathon Issues ==
Some reading materials that may prove useful.
*[http://www.slideshare.net/kcranstn/phylotastic-ievobio Hints from Phylotastic Hackathon - see Slides 6 - 14] Phylotastic hackathon report from 2012 iEvoBio meeting
*[http://informatics.nescent.org/wiki/Hackathon_Whitepaper_Guidelines Nescent Hackathon Whitepaper Guidelines]