"Automatic transcription, through Quartex's HTR technology, presents us with new and exciting possibilities to increase the accessibility and reach of the CLA's manuscript materials."Zachary Bodnar, Archivist, Congregational Library & Archives
Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) has been enhanced to provide editable, fully searchable transcriptions of handwritten assets, generated in-platform with a single click.
HTR Transcriptions are displayed alongside the original asset, and provide an additional source of data for your users to search, extending the discoverability of your collections and allowing users to explore much more deeply, adding depth and scope to their research.
HTR Transcription is a game-changing development, and it’s unique to Quartex.
Click the link below to access the Quartex demo site, where you can discover more about how HTR Transcription works and explore accuracy rates for manuscript samples that have been run through this ground-breaking technology.
Explore HTR Transcription samples on the demo site


Your command centre for automated transcription
With the launch of HTR Transcription, Quartex can become your transcription one-stop-shop; your command centre for generating editable, fully searchable transcriptions across all of your handwritten, printed, and AV assets. And they can all be generated easily, in-platform, with a single click.


Highly accurate manuscript transcriptions
HTR Transcription boasts an impressive character accuracy rating of up to 97%, depending on legibility, orientation and overall condition of the original, and can also recognize and replicate grammatical markers and character case. Transcriptions are also fully editable, so your team or volunteers can check each result and increase accuracy to 100% for optimum value.


Editable transcriptions for enhanced accuracy
Each of the transcription tools in Quartex automatically generates a transcript with a high degree of accuracy. However, HTR and OCR transcriptions are also editable, online or offline, with editable A/V transcripts launching this summer. So, whether you use external transcription services or volunteer programs to correct anomalies or prefer to keep everything within Quartex, the power to create 100% accurate transcripts is yours.


Enhanced accessibility of manuscript collections
Handwritten assets can be among the most challenging for users of your online collections to access and decipher, especially for those that rely on screen-readers to articulate page contents. With automatic transcriptions of your manuscript collections now available in Quartex, your digitized collection can become more accessible and discoverable to a wider community of users.


Unlock your manuscripts' hidden potential
HTR Transcription adds a new dimension to Digital Humanities projects by helping users of your manuscript collections to quickly and easily identify the sources that matter to their studies - while the ability to search transcripts for names and keywords can help to widen the scope of their research in ways that weren't previously apparent.


Watch the HTR Transcription webinar
Find out how HTR Transcription complements Quartex's existing functionality to create a transcription command centre, and deep-dive into multiple handwritten assets, from our partners' collections and our own, to explore transcription accuracy for different scripts, document types, annotations and marginalia, orientation, and other impacting factors.
Optimizing Access and Discovery in an Evolving Technological Landscape
The team at McGill University Library has evaluated the long-term role of HTR Transcription in unlocking the search potential of archival manuscript materials. Watch this webinar to gain a deeper insight into the technology's real-world application, and evaluate its role in the development and enhancement of efficient transcription workflows for manuscript collections.
Harnessing Handwritten Text Recognition to improve access and discovery across digital collections
The correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning is presented in The Browning Letters collection by Baylor University Libraries, which has been the subject of a manual transcription programme running over many years. The Library team is exploring the use of HTR technology in Quartex as part of a project to establish an efficient workflow to deliver accurate transcriptions of these letters.
Unlock your manuscript collections with HTR
Download our flyer, "Unlock your manuscript collections with HTR", for a complete overview of HTR's capabilities.
Download "Unlock your manuscript collections with HTR"