Historical Manuscripts Research Articles

IForal: Automated Handwritten Text Transcription for Historical Medieval Manuscripts

The transcription of historical manuscripts aims at making our cultural heritage more accessible to experts and also to the larger public, but it is a challenging and time-intensive task. This paper contributes an automated solution for text layout recognition, segmentation, and recognition to speed up the transcription process of historical manuscripts. The focus is on transcribing Portuguese municipal documents from the Middle Ages in the context of the iForal project, including the contribution of an annotated dataset containing Portuguese medieval documents, notably a corpus of 67 Portuguese royal charter data. The proposed system can accurately identify document layouts, isolate the text, segment, and transcribe it. Results for the layout recognition model achieved 0.98 mAP@0.50 and 0.98 precision, while the text segmentation model achieved 0.91 mAP@0.50, detecting 95% of the lines. The text recognition model achieved 8.1% character error rate (CER) and 25.5% word error rate (WER) on the test set. These results can then be validated by palaeographers with less effort, contributing to achieving high-quality transcriptions faster. Moreover, the automatic models developed can be utilized as a basis for the creation of models that perform well for other historical handwriting styles, notably using transfer learning techniques. The contributed dataset has been made available on the HTR United catalogue, which includes training datasets to be used for automatic transcription or segmentation models. The models developed can be used, for instance, on the eSriptorium platform, which is used by a vast community of experts.

Unveiling the biodeterioration activity of microbial communities to the historical manuscript: Biocontrol using biosynthesized gold and zinc oxide nanoparticles

Unveiling the biodeterioration activity of microbial communities to the historical manuscript: Biocontrol using biosynthesized gold and zinc oxide nanoparticles

Evaluation of some fungicides for inhibiting proteolytic fungi isolated from leather binding of a historical manuscript dated back to the Mamluk period

Fungi have an essential role in deterioration of historical leather bindings, leading to major problems in the preservative state of these artifacts. This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of some fungicides and nanoparticles materials against fungal activity of historical leather bindings. Historical leather binding from an illuminated paper manuscript dating back to the Mamluk period (1250–1516 AD) at the Al-Azhar library, Cairo, Egypt was examined for fungal infection, and isolation. Results of the present study showed, 21 fungal isolates were isolated and identified using morphological and molecular techniques as Alternaria alternate (5%), Aspergillus fumigatus (43%), Aspergillus niger (43%), Aspergillus terrus (5%), and Penicillium chrysogenum (5%). All fungal isolates exhibited proteolytic activity. Aspergillus niger (2–7) and Aspergillus fumigatus (3–4) achieved the highest proteolytic activity amongst obtained fungal strains. Seven fungicides, difenoconazole, propiconazole, azoxystrobin, pyraclostrobin, boscalid, dimethomorph, and thiophanate-methyl as individual active ingredient and two mixtures [difenoconazole combined with propiconazole (1:1)] and [boscalid combined with pyraclostrobin (2:1)] were evaluated at different concentrations against A. fumigatus and A. niger. Additionally, the effect of titanium and silicon dioxides nanoparticles, against the highest proteolytic fungi A. fumigatus and A. niger was evaluated. The fungal growth inhibition was assessed by the disc diffusion method (DDM). The results revealed that individual or mixed boscalid and pyraclostrobin fungicides at 300 ppm achieved the highest inhibition activity against A. fumigatus, but the linear diagram showed that individual boscalid and pyraclostrobin fungicides at 200 ppm was the ideal concentration for application with the leather samples in the future study. The mixture of boscalid + pyraclostrobin (2:1) exhibited the best preservation effect against A. niger achieving 65.9%, and 82.4% microbial inhibition at 150, and 300 ppm, respectively, followed by individual boscalid fungicide.

Transcribers of the mind: copying historical manuscripts in the British Museum Reading Room, 1759–1795

Transcribers of the mind: copying historical manuscripts in the British Museum Reading Room, 1759–1795

The Quran Manuscripts in Indonesia: A Historical Review

Codicology, the study of written manuscripts, plays a vital role in understanding the history of human civilization, particularly in the context of the development and preservation of Quranic manuscripts. The Nusantara region, which includes Indonesia and parts of Malaysia, boasts a rich tradition of Quranic manuscript production and copying. This research seeks to explore the codicological history of Quranic manuscripts in the Nusantara, focusing on their origins, evolution, regional differences, and significance in the religious and cultural lives of Muslim communities in the area. The research methodology includes analyzing various historical sources, such as existing Quranic manuscripts, historical records, academic studies, and other primary materials. The data collected is examined to identify patterns, trends, and regional distinctions. The findings reveal that the codicological history of Quranic manuscripts in the Nusantara mirrors the region's cultural diversity and the deep-rooted Islamic traditions. These manuscripts originate from various regions and showcase a wide range of writing styles, decorative elements, and materials, shaped by influences such as cultural interactions, technological progress, and local preferences. Understanding this history better can contribute to preserving the cultural and religious heritage of the Nusantara and enhance knowledge of Islamic civilization in the region.

Charting the history of premature birth in France from the 17th century to modern state-of-the art care.

To describe the concept of preterm birth in the history of medicine in France, from the 17th century up until the end of the 20th century, on the basis of old medical textbooks. Historical manuscripts and books held in medical libraries and from our personal collection were examined. Digital copies of medical textbooks online were also studied. Premature deliveries were often referred to as spontaneous abortions or miscarriages, irrespective of the infant's condition at birth. The difference between growth restriction and prematurity was not known. At the end of the 18th century, care for newborn infants entered the age of modern medicine, with observations of the newborn infant and its illnesses and experiments concerning nutrition and thermoregulation treatments. The responsibility for newborn infants, long allocated to midwives and obstetricians, was passed to neonatologists and paediatricians in the 1960s, thanks to developments in our knowledge of neonatal physiology in general and respiration, nutrition and thermoregulation in particular. This article delays the history of medicine concerned the care of preterm infants by obstetricians and then neonatologists, from the 17th century to modern period.

CULTURAL POLITICS OF EX-NONMAINSTREAM RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS MUHDI AKBAR IN THE SELAYAR ISLANDS

<p>Non-mainstream religious movements are a characteristic feature of island regions isolated by the sea. This movement first existed as a societal need at that time. This article attempts to answer the question of how a community of ex-nonmainstream religious movements carries out cultural politics to survive amid the increasingly dominant mainstream religion. This study is based on interview data and observations conducted on several informants. Movement history manuscripts are also a secondary data source in this research. Objectively, it was found that the ex-Muhdi Akbar community carried out cultural politics in three forms. First, they reoriented their movement from focusing on religion and politics to social and cultural ones. Second, open membership regulations and freedom in choosing an official religion means they have a higher emotional bond. Third, accommodation in the government strengthens their position as religious people and does not deviate so that the problems they previously experienced can be minimized. This form of cultural politics is a formula for the success of a non-mainstream religious movement.</p>

National History, Resistance, and Cultural Enclosure in Iceland’s Bell

Iceland offers a combination of spectacular natural beauty and Viking history that has made it a popular destination for tourists. The island, which has a population of under 350,000, was visited by almost 700,000 tourists in 2021, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board, and tourism accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the country’s total export revenue (OECD). The island’s Viking heritage, recorded in the medieval sagas and eddas, is central to Icelandic cultural and national identity and has played an important role in attracting tourists. However, the history of the saga manuscripts as material cultural artefacts is also tied to Iceland’s history as a Danish colony. They were originally collected and stored in Copenhagen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and only partly returned to Iceland in 1971, almost two decades after Iceland gained independence from Denmark. The history of the saga texts is the subject of Halldór Laxness’s novel Iceland’s Bell, published in three volumes from 1943 to 1946 at the height of the Icelandic independence movement. Through a discussion of the novel, this essay will show that the Icelandic sagas, both as tangible and intangible cultural artefacts, are central to Laxness’s articulation of a cultural nationalism that is resistant to Danish colonial domination. It will suggest that not only is Iceland’s Bell a novel concerned with the material history of the sagas, but that this history is intricately linked with the island’s seven centuries of colonial domination by the Kingdom of Denmark. It is thus a consciously anti-colonial novel that portrays the violence, in both cultural and material terms, of Danish rule in Iceland and aligns cultural enclosure with colonial domination.

Circulation of Romanian translations of popular books to the East of the Prut

During the Middle Ages in the Romanian Countries, along with religious and historical manuscripts, also circulated and manuscripts of popular books. In general, this kind of literature occupies a special place in the history of Southeast European books, and a special place in the history of Romanian books. They entered the 16th century on the Greek and Slavonic lines, spreading intensively during the 17th and 18th centuries in multiple manuscript copies. Manuscripts of popular books are preserved in the collections of Romanian libraries, some of them have been put into the scientific circuit, especially texts from the 16th-17th centuries, while those from the 18th century have been less utilized. A work in which the popular traditions about animals and birds are collected, which had a prolonged influence on Romanian cultured literature, is the The Physiologist, a work that served as a Christian moral treatise and zoology manual in the Middle Ages. Fragments of that work were attested by researchers in the The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to His Son Theodosius (1521) and in the Dimitrie Cantemir’s Hieroglyphical History.

Mathematical Data Models and Context-Based Features for Enhancing Historical Degraded Manuscripts Using Neural Network Classification

A common cause of deterioration in historic manuscripts is ink transparency or bleeding from the opposite page. Philologists and paleographers can significantly benefit from minimizing these interferences when attempting to decipher the original text. Additionally, computer-aided text analysis can also gain from such text enhancement. In previous work, we proposed the use of neural networks (NNs) in combination with a data model that characterizes the damage when both sides of a page have been digitized. This approach offers the distinct advantage of allowing the creation of an artificial training set that teaches the NN to differentiate between clean and damaged pixels. We tested this concept using a shallow NN, which proved effective in categorizing texts with varying levels of deterioration. In this study, we adapt the NN design to tackling remaining classification uncertainties caused by areas of text overlap, inhomogeneity, and peaks of degradation. Specifically, we introduce a new output class for pixels within overlapping text areas and incorporate additional features related to the pixel context information to promote the same classification for pixels adjacent to each other. Our experiments demonstrate that these enhancements significantly improve the classification accuracy. This improvement is evident in the quality of both binarization, which aids in text analysis, and virtual restoration, aimed at recovering the manuscript’s original appearance. Tests conducted on a public dataset, using standard quality indices, reveal that the proposed method outperforms both our previous proposals and other notable methods found in the literature.

Restoration and Segmentation of Old Jawi Manuscripts using Variational Image Inpainting and Active Contour Models

Old Jawi Manuscripts (OJM) are crucial to historical studies, offering insights into past societies. However, degradation from mishandling and environmental factors can impair their legibility. To preserve OJM, image inpainting and segmentation are essential for restoring corrupted areas and identifying text. Recently, the Gaussian Regularization Segmentation (GRS) model has shown effectiveness in intensity inhomogeneity grayscale image segmentation, though it was not designed for corrupted OJM images. Therefore, this study aimed to reformulate the GRS model to restore and segment text from real corrupted OJM images. The methodology begins with the incorporation of the Mumford-Shah and Bertalmio inpainting models into the GRS model as new fitting terms, resulting in the Modified Gaussian Regularization Segmentation Mumford-Shah (MGRSM) model and the Modified Gaussian Regularization Segmentation Bertalmio (MGRSB) model, respectively. MATLAB was used to implement these models, and their performance was assessed on 30 corrupted OJM samples from Malay Ethnomathematics Research Group, with expert evaluations and efficiency measured by average elapsed time. The MGRSM model achieved 38.4 percent and 12.4 percent higher overall total scores from experts in terms of segmentation accuracy compared to the GRS and MGRSB models, respectively. While the GRS model is the fastest, the MGRSM model provides superior accuracy, with an average processing time of 9.35 seconds, making it the most optimal for restoring and segmenting OJM images. This approach not only enhances the preservation of historical manuscripts but also provides a practical tool for researchers and historians in safeguarding our cultural heritage.

VGTS: Visually Guided Text Spotting for novel categories in historical manuscripts

In the field of historical manuscript research, scholars frequently encounter novel symbols in ancient texts, investing considerable effort in their identification and documentation. Although existing object detection methods achieve impressive performance on known categories, they struggle to recognize novel symbols without retraining. To address this limitation, we propose a Visually Guided Text Spotting (VGTS) approach that accurately spots novel characters using just one annotated support sample. The core of VGTS is a spatial alignment module consisting of a Dual Spatial Attention (DSA) block and a Geometric Matching (GM) block. The DSA block aims to identify, focus on, and learn discriminative spatial regions in the support and query images, mimicking the human visual spotting process. It first refines the support image by analyzing inter-channel relationships to identify critical areas, and then refines the query image by focusing on informative key points. The GM block, on the other hand, establishes the spatial correspondence between the two images, enabling accurate localization of the target character in the query image. To tackle the example imbalance problem in low-resource spotting tasks, we develop a novel torus loss function that enhances the discriminative power of the embedding space for distance metric learning. To further validate our approach, we introduce a new dataset featuring ancient Dongba hieroglyphics (DBH) associated with the Naxi minority of China. Extensive experiments on the DBH dataset and other public datasets, including Egyptian Hieroglyph (EGY), Historical Arabic Documents (HAD), Tripitaka Koreana in Han (TKH), and Notary Charters (NC), show that VGTS consistently surpasses state-of-the-art methods. The proposed framework exhibits great potential for application in historical manuscript text spotting, enabling scholars to efficiently identify and document novel symbols with minimal annotation effort.

HeritageScript: A cutting-edge approach to historical manuscript script classification with CNN and vision transformer architectures

Determining the script of historical manuscripts is pivotal for understanding historical narratives, providing historians with vital insights into the past. In this study, our focus lies in developing an automated system for effectively identifying the script of historical documents using a deep learning approach. Leveraging the ClAMM dataset as the foundation for our system, we initiate the system with dataset preprocessing, employing two fundamental techniques: denoising through non-local means denoising and binarization using Canny-edge detection. These techniques prepare the document for keypoint detection facilitated by the Harris-corner detector, a feature-detection method. Subsequently, we cluster these keypoints utilizing the k-means algorithm and extract patches based on the identified features. The final step involves training these patches on deep learning models, with a comparative analysis between two architectures: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Vision Transformers (ViT). Given the absence of prior studies investigating the performance of vision transformers on historical manuscripts, our research fills this gap. The system undergoes a series of experiments to fine-tune its parameters for optimal performance. Our conclusive results demonstrate an average accuracy of 89.2 and 91.99% respectively of the CNN and ViT based proposed framework, surpassing the state of the art in historical script classification so far, and affirming the effectiveness of our automated script identification system.

A Historical Handwritten French Manuscripts Text Detection Method in Full Pages

Historical handwritten manuscripts pose challenges to automated recognition techniques due to their unique handwriting styles and cultural backgrounds. In order to solve the problems of complex text word misdetection, omission, and insufficient detection of wide-pitch curved text, this study proposes a high-precision text detection method based on improved YOLOv8s. Firstly, the Swin Transformer is used to replace C2f at the end of the backbone network to solve the shortcomings of fine-grained information loss and insufficient learning features in text word detection. Secondly, the Dysample (Dynamic Upsampling Operator) method is used to retain more detailed features of the target and overcome the shortcomings of information loss in traditional upsampling to realize the text detection task for dense targets. Then, the LSK (Large Selective Kernel) module is added to the detection head to dynamically adjust the feature extraction receptive field, which solves the cases of extreme aspect ratio words, unfocused small text, and complex shape text in text detection. Finally, in order to overcome the CIOU (Complete Intersection Over Union) loss in target box regression with unclear aspect ratio, insensitive to size change, and insufficient correlation between target coordinates, Gaussian Wasserstein Distance (GWD) is introduced to modify the regression loss to measure the similarity between the two bounding boxes in order to obtain high-quality bounding boxes. Compared with the State-of-the-Art methods, the proposed method achieves optimal performance in text detection, with the precision and mAP@0.5 reaching 86.3% and 82.4%, which are 8.1% and 6.7% higher than the original method, respectively. The advancement of each module is verified by ablation experiments. The experimental results show that the method proposed in this study can effectively realize complex text detection and provide a powerful technical means for historical manuscript reproduction.

Lipoprotein(a) in Children and Adolescents: Risk or Causal Factor for Cardiovascular Disease? A Narrative Review.

The evaluation of serum Lp(a) values in childhood and adolescence has been widely debated, and in the last few years, many authors have tried to better define Lp(a) role in atherosclerosis pathogenesis, starting from childhood. In our narrative review, we have evaluated the main historical stages of Lp(a) studies in childhood, trying to focus on pathogenic mechanisms linked to elevated serum Lp(a) values, starting from ischemic stroke and vascular damage, and to its possible direct involvement in premature atherosclerosis from childhood onwards. Historic manuscripts on Lp(a) in pediatric patients have mainly focused on serum Lp(a) values and increased stroke risk. More recently, many studies have evaluated Lp(a) as a coronary vascular disease (CVD) risk factor starting from childhood, especially related to a positive family history of premature CVD. Finally, only a few studies evaluated the role of Lp(a) in premature atherosclerotic processes and endothelial and vascular damage in pediatric patients. Lastly, we have hypothesized a future perspective, with the hope that plasma Lp(a) levels will be treated with a tailored pharmacologic approach, and Lp(a) will become a precocious therapeutic target to control the atherosclerotic pathways from the first years of life.

Revolutionizing Historical Manuscript Analysis: A Deep Learning Approach with Intelligent Feature Extraction for Script Classification

Revolutionizing Historical Manuscript Analysis: A Deep Learning Approach with Intelligent Feature Extraction for Script Classification

Generative innovations for paleography: enhancing character image synthesis through unconditional single image models

Data scarcity in paleographic image datasets poses a significant challenge to researchers and scholars in the field. Unlike modern printed texts, historical manuscripts and documents are often scarce and fragile, making them difficult to digitize and create comprehensive datasets. Recently many innovations have been arrived on single image generative models for natural images but none of them are focused on paleographic character images and other handwritten datasets. In paleographic images like stone inscription characters, maintaining exact shape and structure of character is important unlike natural images. In this paper we propose an unconditional single image generative model, CharGAN for isolated paleographic character images. In the proposed system, augmented images are generated from a single image using generative adversarial networks, while maintaining their structure. Specifically, an external augmentation inducer is used to create higher-level augmentations in the generated images. In addition, the input to the generator is replaced with dynamic sampling from a Gaussian mixture model to make changes to the low-level features. From our experimental results, we infer that these two enhancements make single-image generative models suitable not only for natural images, but also for paleographic character images and other handwritten character datasets, the AHCD dataset, and EMNIST, where the global structure is important. Both the qualitative and quantitative results show that our approach is effective and superior in single-image generative tasks, particularly in isolated character image generation.

Sala Coronado: exponente principal del patrimonio documental y bibliográfico de la Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de las Villas (Cuba)

Francisco de Paula Coronado is a significant personality in 20th-century Cuban historiography and library science. Due to his outstanding work, he served as the director of the National Library "José Martí" from 1920 to 1946. Throughout his life, he devoted himself to collecting important bibliographic heritage works, including three incunabula and original manuscripts of universal history and Cuba. Due to various reasons, his library came under the custody of the Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, where it is currently located. This gem of the bibliographic heritage is little known and therefore not frequently consulted by researchers and historians. This contribution aims to characterize the Coronado Collection based on the heritage values of the documents it preserves. The study was categorized as descriptive with a theoretical contribution. Classic documentary analysis was used as the main method. The history of the collection, composition of the holdings, and level of preservation were analyzed.

Evaluating the efficacy of probiotic bacterial strain Lactobacillus plantarum for inhibition of fungal strains associated with historical manuscript deterioration: An experimental study

The aim of this study is to develop safe biological methods for controlling fungal deterioration of historical manuscripts. Therefore, fifteen fungal isolates were obtained from paper sheets and leather skins of a deteriorated historical manuscript (dated back to the 13th century). Those isolates were identified using both traditional methods and ITS-sequencing analysis. Aspergillus niger accounted for seven strains, Penicillium citrinum for one strain, Aspergillus flavus for three, Aspergillus fumigatus for one, Aspergillus nidulans for one, and Penicillium chrysogenum for two of the fungal strains that were obtained. The ability of fungal strains for the secretion of cellulase, amylase, gelatinase, and pectinase as hydrolytic enzymes was evaluated. The capability of the probiotic-bacterial strain Lactobacillus plantarum DSM 20174 for inhibition of fungal strains that cause severe deterioration was studied using ethyl acetate-extract. The metabolic profile of the ethyl acetate-extract showed the presence of both high- and low-molecular-weight active compounds as revealed by GC-MS analysis. The safe dose to prevent fungal growth was determined by testing the ethyl acetate extract's biocompatibility against Wi38 and HFB4 as normal cell lines. The extract was found to have a concentration-dependent cytotoxic impact on Wi38 and HFB4, with IC50 values of 416 ± 4.5 and 349.7 ± 5.9 μg mL−1, respectively. It was suggested that 100 μg mL−1 as a safe concentration could be used for paper preservation. Whatman filter paper treated with ethyl acetate extract was used to cultivate the fungal strain Penicillium citrinum AX2. According to data analysis, fungal inhibition measurement, SEM, ATR-FT-IR, XRD, color change measurement, and mechanical property assessment, the recommended concentration of ethyl acetate extract was adequate to protect paper inoculated with the highest enzymatic producer fungi, P. citrinum AX2.

A Survey on Text-Line Segmentation in Arab Historical Manuscripts

The segmentation process entails dividing or decomposing the entire document image into segments. This operation serves as a fundamental step in developing any writing or optical character recognition system. However, numerous existing segmentation schemes encounter challenges when dealing with specific script styles, like ancient or historical Arabic writing found in ancient manuscripts, which possesses unique characteristics. These characteristics include inclined text lines, overlapping letters, diacritic marks, decorative elements, variable letter forms, and ligatures (combinations of two or more letters merged to form a single connected shape). Thus, in this paper, we present a thorough survey of the field. The survey is composed of two parts. The first section provides a concise overview of historical Arabic documents. The second, which serves as the primary section, focuses on the crucial step of handwritten document recognition, specifically segmentation. A detailed and systematic overview of various segmentation approaches at different levels for extracting handwritten Arabic text-lines is outlined, followed by a literature study analyzing proposed works in this area.