Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

Digitizing Books - A Newer Way

Gentle readers, I've neglected you for all the other interesting things that life has offered this sunny (and in Alberta - snowy!) May.  My apologies. There are a variety of things to tell you about, but I'll confine each to a discrete blog  so that you've got something to come back for.

I have a particular fascination with things that can serve two (opposite) purposes.  Today - those things are CAPTCHAS.

When you go to a portion of a website that intends to give the public full access, but none to the e-mail and content-harvesting computer robots, clever designers are now using CAPTCHAs (Completely automated Public Turing* test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart). Since a robot can't see the content of an image, they give up in frustration.  You, dear reader, I hope, are not turning away frustrated.

Now, in a 21st century sense of efficiency, these little typing strokes are being employed in aid of making history more accessible.  CBC has reported this morning that CAPTCHAs are now being harnessed, being converted from mustangs to working horses, to help turn old books into digetized editions.  How & why?

Why - I'll hint at it with the quotation from the end of the CBC article: "It's definitely a barn-raising to try to build the great library".  That ought to get Mennonite attention!

Many books now can be scanned and converted to digitized versions (turned from images to searchable, editable, and formatable) text through  a process known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).  Changes are that if you have a scanner at home, it has this amazing OCR capacity. 

In OCR, each shape on the scanned page is assessed for his height, width, shape of edges, blank spots for the character/number it likely represents and a new document is created with the replaced character/number as text until you have a full transliteration of the original document.  Generally this works very well if using an English-language source document that has been wordprocessed/typed/typeset originally with a standard font like Courier, Times Roman, Arial, etc. I've had great success with this, getting well over 95% accuracy with contemporary documents on white paper that I wanted to manage in my computer (e.g. scanning in an obituary so that I can quote it in a family history).

But, if the original is badly yellowed and the scan cannot easily pick out the edges of the characters/numbers from the backgrond or the paper is marked up with lines, or any of a bunch of other confounding elements, OCR will fail to be accurate - or simply fail.

This is where the big boys are harnessing the CAPTCHA mustangs and making them workhorses.  The big boys are partnering up with the folks who want old books digitized - and are putting scanned snippets of old documents into the CAPTCHAs that web visitors are happy to transliterate for access to interesting web content.  Then, they add that little transliteration to the previous ones .... and slowly build up a digitized version of the book.

For today's CBC story, see: Web registration tool to encode books online.  If the link fails for you (news stories do get deleted after a time), I've kept a copy of it for future use - I can send the full content as an attachment.

In kinship,
Judii

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* "Turing" references another piece of computer history that would stray us further from our topic.  If you'd like to read up on it, see: Wikipedia: Turing test

Digitized Online Resources - Now, Full-length Books

There are several kinds of ways that one can place information about rich data resources (essentially what archivists call "finding aids") online. 

• Indexes are the quickest approach.  For genealogists, indexes that include surnames are critical.  When they have additional details such as birth or death date, geographic location of birth and death, names of spouse, children or parents - all make them increasingly useful.  cemetery indexes are a good example. 
  
  With the index that includes an individual of interest, it's just a matter of tracking down the document that is being indexed - to get the richness that can be so helpful.
  
  See MHSA's Name Index to B. H. Unruh's book, Die niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert.
  
• Transcriptions are much more work and tend to eliminate the need for genealogists to track down the original document.  Transcriptions are distinguished from indexes in that they capture much more - if not all - of the content of a document.
  
  See MHSA's transcription of Peter Riediger's 1872 immigration to Canada journal entries.
  
• Extractions, in fact, are much more common.  These are more than indexes and less than transcriptions.  They are the transciption of limited content from an original document - the genealogical-relevant contents from the are accounts
  
  An example of this can be found on MHSA's website for Children Vaccinated Against Smallpox, Chortitza Colony in South Russia, 1809.
• Digitized Books - In recent years, there are more and more genealogically-rich projects of a fourth approach - the digitized book.  Not only are the scanned and placed online, sometimes they are fully searchable.
  
  The most important for my own research has been Peter D. Zacharias' 1976 local history for Reinland, Manitoba. Reinland: An Experience in Community. But, there are many many such books online.  Increasingly there are ones with content relevant to Mennonite family history.
• Others just recently found online are:
  
  Gerbrandt, Henry J. (1970). Adventure in Faith: the Background in Europe and the Development in Canada of the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba. Altona, MB: DW Friesen & Sons.
  
  Derksen, Seymor A. (1980). My Father's House. Langham, SK: Author.
  
  Epp-Tiessen, Esther. (n.d.). Altona: The Story of a Prairie Town. Altona, MB: DW Friesen & Sons.
  
  Friesen, Rhinehart, Friesen. (1988). A Mennonite Odyssey. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1988.
  
  Zacharias, Peter D. (1976). Reinland: An Experience in Community. Winkler, MB: Reinland Centennial Committee.

For links to all of these kinds of projects for your research, see the Mennonite Genealogical Data Index for links to projects being placed online from all over.  MHSA's own work in this area can be found as linksfrom our MHSA Projects page.

In kinship,
Judii

Mennonites in the Cities of Imperial Russia, Vol. 1

A new book by Helmut T. Huebert (author of the well-thumbed Mennonite Historial Atlases) has recently been published, entitled Mennonites in the Cities of Imperial Russia.  It's a hefty book - 8 1/2" x 11" and 450 pp long.  It covers seven Russian cities where Mennonites lived, featuring long lists and at least cursory description of those residents, businesses, Institutions, and Schools operated by Mennonites, and biographical essays on some of the more notable residents. 

to give you an idea of the content, I'll list the headings from the lists of people and indication of how many people are in the lists as indicated by Huebert.  beneath each list I'll identify the number of Rempels who appear in the list.  This may only be interesting to other Rempel researchers, but it will give you an idea of the scope of the book and whether it belongs on your reference shelf. 

Huebert's book is available for purchase from the MHSA (see link on upper right corner of this webpage)

List of people who at one time lived in Barvenkovo (184)

1. no Rempels

List of people who at one time lived in Berdyansk (978)

1. Gustav Johann Rempel - in 1922
2. Isbrand Peter Rempel b 27 Aug 1841 Sparrau, Molotschna
3. Jacob Rempel, guest in 1877
4. Johann Rempel b ca 1797
5. Johann b 11 Jul 1831
6. Johann Johann, son of windmill owner
7. Johann Peter b 258 Feb 1832 Sparrau
8. Mr. Rempel (dau = Justina b 14 May 1893)
9. Nikolai Isbrand Rempel b 18 Jan 1867 Berdyansk
10. Peter rempel, guest 1877
11. Peter G. Rempel b 10 Feb 1866 Nieder Chortitza
12. Peter Peter Rempel b 1803 Marienburg, W Prussia
13. Wilhelm Jakob Rempel b 11 Dec 1866 Elisabetthal,  Molotschna

List of people who at one time lived in Melitopol (or area) (189)

1. Georg Nikolai Rempel (s of Nikali Isbrandt Rempel and Katharina Martens; d 17 Sep Welland, ON)
2. Heinrich Nikolai Rempel (b to GNR)
3. Johann Heinrich Rempel
4. Nikolai Isbrand Rempel (also listed in Berdyansk) b 18 Jan 1867 Berdyansk
5. Nikolai Nikolai Rempel (b to GNR)

List of people who at one time lived in Millerovo (400)

1. Abram Rempel
2. Abram Dietrich Rempel (immig to Can 1924, settled in Herbert, SK

List of people who at one time lived in Melitopol (189)

1. Johann Gerhard Rempel b 8 Sep 1878 Rosenthal, Chortitza
2. Kornelius Gerhard Rempel b 11 Aug 1882 Rosenthal
3. Widow Peter Rempel
4. Susanna Rempel b ca 1892

List of people who at one time lived in Orechov (138)

1. Mr. Rempel b ca 1870

List of people who at one time lived in Pologi (68)

1. no Rempels

List of people who at one time lived in Sevastopol (28)

1. no Rempels

List of people who at one time lived in Simferopol (85)

1. Agatha Rempel from Gnadenfeld
2. Maria Rempel from Gnadenfeld

In Kinship,
Judii

New Book: Hard Passage

Now out!  Arthur Kroeger's new book, Hard Passage was launched in Calgary when the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada met here.

You can find the University of Alberta (publisher) summary of the book online.  And, it's available for  purchase from MHSA for $37 plus $8 s/h (no GST or PST).  It and other books that we offer for sale can be found on our Publications page (see also order form).

In Kinship,
Judii