A Dataset for Handwritten Text Recognition in Medieval Notarial Charters Written on Parchment

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Coll Ardanuy, Mariona; Cuadrada, Coral; Sarobe, Ramon, 2025, "A Dataset for Handwritten Text Recognition in Medieval Notarial Charters Written on Parchment", https://dataverse.bsc.es/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=perma:BSC/0VB0MC, BSC Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:U0b+M2+5lwgcyjBeeZQ5nQ== [fileUNF]

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Description	We present a new dataset for the task of handwritten text recognition on medieval manuscripts, focusing on notarial charters written on parchment dating from the 13th to 15th centuries. Our dataset is comprised of 100 digitized manuscripts (3,369 lines), which have been carefully selected to represent the large variation that is present in the sources, encompassing at least 80 distinct hands and various document types (from sales and inventories to last wills and marriage contracts). Written primarily in Medieval Latin with fragments in Medieval Catalan, these manuscripts exhibit varying stages of preservation and degrees of deterioration, resulting in a very heterogeneous dataset. The dataset consists of 100 images and their associated transcriptions in the PageXML format, as well as a csv file with metadata for each element. The process of creation of the dataset is documented in the accompanying datasheet. (2025-06-26)
Subject	Arts and Humanities
Keyword	handwritten text recognition, Late Middle Ages, automatic transcription
Related Publication	Is Supplement To: Mariona Coll Ardanuy, Iban Berganzo-Besga, Ramon Sarobe, and Coral Cuadrada. 2025 (forthcoming). Evaluating Handwritten Text Recognition in Medieval Notarial Manuscripts: A New Dataset and Comprehensive Analysis. In International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition
Notes	A derived version of the dataset for line-level handwritten text recognition is available on HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/BSC-CSSH/AMSMB-line-transcription. The derived version was created using parse-pagexml: https://gitlab.bsc.es/cssh/releases/parse-pagexml.
License/Data Use Agreement	CC BY-SA 4.0

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	Datasheet.pdf Adobe PDF - 1017.3 KB Published Jun 26, 2025 56 Downloads MD5: 76e5087e90d32868da9ab2396728b1b8	Preview "Datasheet.pdf" Access File File Access Public Download Options Adobe PDF Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
	metadata.tab Tabular Data - 9.3 KB Published Jun 26, 2025 39 Downloads 9 Variables, 100 Observations UNF:6:U0b+M2+5lwgcyjBeeZQ5nQ== Documentation	Preview "metadata.tab" Access File File Access Public Download Options Comma Separated Values (Original File Format) Tab-Delimited RData Download Metadata DDI Codebook v2 Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX Explore Options Data Explorer Data Explorer
	README.md Markdown Text - 4.6 KB Published Jun 26, 2025 32 Downloads MD5: 7279bded4fa1b31bdb3ef1fec0f9933e Documentation	Preview "README.md" Access File File Access Public Download Options Markdown Text Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
	AMSMB_1-3-100.jpg data/test/JPEG Image - 885.7 KB Published Jun 26, 2025 47 Downloads MD5: 2493694c751e68e3a48c64aa15fbc2f0 Data	Preview "data/test/AMSMB_1-3-100.jpg" Access File File Access Public Download Options JPEG Image Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
	AMSMB_1-3-100.xml data/test/XML - 20.6 KB Published Jun 26, 2025 31 Downloads MD5: de545aacc4cbda72e638503184b8d2d2 Data	Access File File Access Public Download Options XML Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
	AMSMB_1-62-07.jpg data/test/JPEG Image - 3.6 MB Published Jun 26, 2025 27 Downloads MD5: 347a788bab6ce8ec6d822960e7273a38 Data	Preview "data/test/AMSMB_1-62-07.jpg" Access File File Access Public Download Options JPEG Image Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
	AMSMB_1-62-07.xml data/test/XML - 46.3 KB Published Jun 26, 2025 25 Downloads MD5: 77f467c5b978c6c5fbb8fac51d7fbe41 Data	Access File File Access Public Download Options XML Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
	AMSMB_1-70-02.jpg data/test/JPEG Image - 7.9 MB Published Jun 26, 2025 26 Downloads MD5: a709a109ac20a2935c84428d45caef49 Data	Preview "data/test/AMSMB_1-70-02.jpg" Access File File Access Public Download Options JPEG Image Download Metadata Data File Citation Download EndNote XML Download RIS Download BibTeX
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Citation Metadata

Persistent Identifier	perma:BSC/0VB0MC
Publication Date	2025-06-26
Title	A Dataset for Handwritten Text Recognition in Medieval Notarial Charters Written on Parchment
Alternative Title	AMSMB HTR
Author	https://ror.org/05sd8tv96https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8455-7196 https://ror.org/05sd8tv96https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4577-2381 https://ror.org/05sd8tv96https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2099-3567
Point of Contact	Use email button above to contact. Coll Ardanuy, Mariona (Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC))
Description	We present a new dataset for the task of handwritten text recognition on medieval manuscripts, focusing on notarial charters written on parchment dating from the 13th to 15th centuries. Our dataset is comprised of 100 digitized manuscripts (3,369 lines), which have been carefully selected to represent the large variation that is present in the sources, encompassing at least 80 distinct hands and various document types (from sales and inventories to last wills and marriage contracts). Written primarily in Medieval Latin with fragments in Medieval Catalan, these manuscripts exhibit varying stages of preservation and degrees of deterioration, resulting in a very heterogeneous dataset. The dataset consists of 100 images and their associated transcriptions in the PageXML format, as well as a csv file with metadata for each element. The process of creation of the dataset is documented in the accompanying datasheet. (2025-06-26)
Subject	Arts and Humanities
Keyword	handwritten text recognition Late Middle Ages automatic transcription
Topic Classification	medieval history artificial intelligence archival history diplomatics paleography document analysis and recognition
Related Publication	Is Supplement To: Mariona Coll Ardanuy, Iban Berganzo-Besga, Ramon Sarobe, and Coral Cuadrada. 2025 (forthcoming). Evaluating Handwritten Text Recognition in Medieval Notarial Manuscripts: A New Dataset and Comprehensive Analysis. In International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition
Notes	A derived version of the dataset for line-level handwritten text recognition is available on HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/BSC-CSSH/AMSMB-line-transcription. The derived version was created using parse-pagexml: https://gitlab.bsc.es/cssh/releases/parse-pagexml.
Language	Latin; Catalan, Valencian
Producer	Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) (BSC) https://bsc.es/
Production Date	2025-03-14
Production Location	Barcelona
Contributor	Other: Arxiu dels Marquesos de Santa Maria de Barberà Other: Arxiu Municipal de Vilassar de Dalt
Funding Information	AI4S fellowship within the “Generación D” initiative by Red.es, Ministerio para la Transformación Digital y de la Función Pública, for talent attraction, funded by NextGenerationEU through PRTR: C005/24-ED CV1
Distributor	Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) (BSC) https://bsc.es/
Distribution Date	2025-06-06
Depositor	Coll Ardanuy, Mariona
Deposit Date	2025-06-04
Time Period	Start Date: 1208-01-01; End Date: 1499-12-31
Date of Collection	Start Date: 2024-08-01; End Date: 2025-03-14
Data Type	xml transcriptions; digitized manuscripts; csv metadata file; pdf file
Software	eScriptorium, Version: 0.14.2
Origin of Historical Sources	Arxiu dels Marquesos de Santa Maria de Barberà: https://arxiumarquesosdebarbera.cat/
Characteristic of Sources	Notarial charters written on parchment dating from the 13th to 15th centuries, carefully selected to represent the large variation that is present in the sources, encompassing at least 80 distinct hands, various document types (from sales and inventories to last wills and marriage contracts), and spanning three centuries; written primarily in Medieval Latin with fragments in Medieval Catalan, these manuscripts exhibit varying stages of preservation and degrees of deterioration.
Documentation and Access to Sources	The digitized images have been provided by the Arxiu Municipal de Vilassar de Dalt (AMVD), through its agreement with the Arxiu dels Marquesos de Santa Maria de Barberà (AMSMB).

Geospatial Metadata

Geographic Coverage	Spain, Catalonia, Spain, Balearic Islands,
Geographic Bounding Box	-1.27 4.64 43.05 38.37

Social Science and Humanities Metadata

Unit of Analysis	MediaUnit.StillImage; MediaUnit.Text
Universe	Tens of thousands of notarial charters written on parchment dating from the 13th to 15th centuries in Medieval Latin and Medieval Catalan.
Data Collector	Archival History research line at the Computational Social Sciences and Humanities Laboratory, Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Sampling Procedure	The 100 digitized manuscripts have been carefully selected by an expert medievalist and paleographer to represent---to the extent possible---the variation that is present in the original sources. They are written by different writers (at least 80 known hands, and several others unknown) across three centuries (from 1208 to 1499) and throughout the Catalan-speaking lands. Their contents are also very diverse, ranging from sales and inventories to last wills and marriage contracts, and up to 29 different document types. They are also diverse in terms of shape (with parchments displaying height-to-width ratios that range from 0.46 to 1.46), amount of text crammed into the parchments (between 8 and 106 lines), and line lengths (with average page lines ranging from 84 to 341 characters. They also display different stages of preservation, levels of brightness and contrast, as well as different types of deterioration that are common in parchments, such as holes, folds, stains, discoloured areas, and ink loss or fading.

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