Zooniverse Herbarium Transcription Project

Every so often, Zooniverse has a project of special interest to the iNaturalist community. Their latest is designed to train a machine learning algo to accurately transcribe notes on herbarium specimens. This is supposed to help save a lot of time in the specimen digitization process.

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/bmcdonald1/humans-and-machines-deciphering-herbarium-handwriting

Check it out if you are interested!

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As for the blue box, is the text in this box printed or handwritten? :D

Is that actual Braille, or just a punch card pattern?

It looks like punched letters, the lower part of “FIELD” maybe. In the blue box are the two holes in the center of the E.

The whole project involves humans identifying text so a program can learn how. There are probably places where it is difficult to decipher the text, but Zooniverse is pretty good about providing “I don’t know” buttons so volunteers don’t get forced to make bad calls.

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