Digitisation Days, organized by the Succeed project and the Impact Centre of Competence, were held at Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE) on the 19th and 20th of May, 2014.
Digitisation brought together researchers in the complementary fields of Document Image Analysis and Recognition, Computational Linguistics and Digital Humanities as well as content holders and practitioners working on the creation, transformation and exploitation of historical documents in digital form.
By gathering such a multi-disciplinary group of experts, Digitisation Days contributed to combine experiences and discussing ways forward for tackling the significant challenges and opportunities presented by historical documents.
The DATeCH international conference received 49 submissions from 23 countries and, after evaluation by 44 reviewers, 16 papers were accepted for oral presentation. Another 15
additional papers were accepted to be presented as posters to allow for better one-to-one discussion.
The program of Digitisation Days included six sessions, plus two panel sessions, a round table and presentations by commercial organisations.
Digitisation Days started on May 19th with the check-in of over 150 participants at the BNE hall.
Check-in desk at the Digitisation Days
After the registration, Digitisation Days were officialy opened by Klaus Schulz and Apostolos Antonacopoulos (programme chairs of DATeCH), and Rafael Carrasco (Succeed project coordinator) .The participants were welcome by Ana Santos, Director of Biblioteca Nacional de España.
Ana Santos, Director of Biblioteca Nacional de España.
Klaus Schulz and Apostolos Antonacopoulos, DATeCH International Conference chairs, at the opening session
Isabel Bordes, from the BNE, briefly introduced the National Library digiitsation progammes.