Historical manuscripts are now searchable in the same way as contemporary documents.
READ, EU-funded project, has developed Transkribus, a service platform that automatically transcribes scanned handwritten documents in many languages including Arabic and Hebrew. The character error rate is as low as 3.5 %.
Transkribus is used by more than 14 000 users interested in historical archives. This new technology already interests some European national archive institutions which are busy with their digitisation process.