Mechelen (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Mechelen is digitizing historical documents using Transkribus, an AI-powered tool that reads handwriting, even from the 12th century. Alderman Greet Geypen supports this initiative, making ship registers, letters, and charters accessible online for researchers and the public.
The city of Mechelen is making its old documents available online by using a program called Transkribus. According to the officials, anyone can see these documents, not just researchers or people who visit the archives. The documents are being turned into digital copies.
They mentioned that this would create a big collection of information about Mechelen’s history that people can see on the internet. The city wants everyone to be able to learn about Mechelen’s history, no matter who they are. By making history easier to access, Mechelen hopes to keep its history alive for future generations.
Officials mentioned that residents can search for names, dates, and places in old documents using computers. Students will find it easier to complete their school projects, and historians can study a lot of information quickly.
How is Mechelen making historic documents accessible online?
Transkribus is a new computer program that can read handwritten documents and turn them into digital text that people can easily search. This is helpful for historians, researchers, and people who work in archives because it makes old documents much easier to read.
Transkribus uses a special kind of computer learning to understand handwriting, even old, fancy handwriting. Officials mentioned that this saves researchers a lot of time and helps keep old documents safe because they don’t have to be handled as much.
In this way, millions of documents dating back to the 12th century can be made accessible,
says Alderman for Heritage Greet Geypen.
These documents include ship lists, letters, and old legal papers. According to Geypen, the ship lists tell us about sailing, trading, and how people made money in the past. Letters from long ago show us what life was like, what people thought about, and how governments worked.
He mentioned that the old legal papers tell us about who owned land, how things were run, and what people agreed to in the past. Because these documents are now digital, researchers can easily find information by searching for keywords.
It concerns, among other things, ship registers, letters and charters that are all written down in a specific medieval text,
says Geypen.
