The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved an extension of the OCR-D project for another 18 months. The new funding phase will start in October 2018 and will therefore end in March 2020. This good news allows us to continue supporting the module projects and to consolidate the results. On the other hand, it will also allow the coordination committee’s own work packages to be continued and deepened.

The current funding phase would end in the 3rd quarter of 2018 and project-immanent tasks such as combining the individual module project results into a software package or updating the DFG’s “Digitisation” rules of practice based on the findings of this project would not have been possible. During the extension period, the Coordinating Committee will work particularly on the OCR-D framework, the continuous development of which you can follow via the GitHub site (http://www.github.de/ocr-d).

In addition, we are working on the later distribution of the software, be it by evaluating the modules on the basis of application examples, by contacts to OCR service providers or a pilot program in spring 2019. Within the pilot programme, the requirements already identified should be even better tailored to the needs of the future users.

The third focus is on the extension of the ground truth data and the format maintenance and, of course, the coordination and management of the Communication with the module projects. Besides the internal workshops the coordinating body will hold a final workshop in summer 2019, for which we will invite the professional public.