Retrospective document conversion: application to the library domain

Abstract.

This paper describes a framework for retrospective document conversion in the library domain. Drawing on the experience and insight gained from projects launched over the present decade by the European Commission, it outlines the requirements for solving the problem of retroconversion and traces the main phases of associated processing. To highlight the main problems encountered in this area, the paper also outlines studies conducted by our group in the more project for the retroconversion of old catalogues belonging to two different libraries: National French Library and Royal Belgian Library. For the French Library, the idea was to study the feasibility of a recognition approach avoiding the use of ocr and basing the strategy mainly on visual features. The challenge was to recognize a logical structure from its physical aspects. The modest results obtained from experiments for this first study led us, in the second study, to base the structural recognition methodology more on the logical aspects by focusing the analysis on the content. Furthermore, for the Belgian references, the aim was to convert reference catalogues into a more conventional unimarc format while respecting the industrial constraints. Without manual intervention, 75% rate of correct recognition was obtained on 11 catalogues containing about 4548 references.