In the autumn of 1996, the newly installed Taliban decreed that moving pictures were heretical and had to be destroyed. This was obviously very bad news for Afghan Film, the Kabul-based organisation that both promoted Afghan cinema and housed the Asian republic’s entire film and TV archive. One hundred and eighteen of its 120 employees fled; the two who remained, lab technician Khwaja Ahmadshah and a colleague, resolved to risk their lives in defence of cinema.
I’d be the first to admit that I have a soft-spot for archives. I know that archives are not the kind of things that give most folks a “warm and fuzzy” feeling, but like museums and libraries and even the detritus amassed by “collectors” their worth is often underestimated. Folks who work in archives are often obsessively devoted to the material they were hired to protect. This article, from guardian.co.uk, ‘If I find one reel, I must kill you’ hopefully will help you to get the “warm and fuzzies” when you think of archives and their relationship to our history and culture.
As an archive lover this should interest you.
The University of Gend (Ghand, Belgium), has agreed a while ago to scan all their extensive library’s books into Google book search. Due to copyright fears, the scanning is limited to works up till 1867 (yes, the copyright-fear-monster). So far, 5,000 done and they will ramp up to 10,000 a month. The issue is that OCR of especially these older books is a disaster, quickly poisoning Google’s index. One example:
The letter s was often written as a sort of f. Example can be found here
OCR-ed text
STINKDIER, z. n., o., des ftifikdiers , of van het Jii/ikdler; meerv. finkdieren. Verkleinw. flinkdler- tje. Van /linken en dier. Dezen naam geeft men aan een bijzonder gedacht van dieren , dat uit de Civctkat, den Ichneumon, en nog 21 andere foorten, bellaat, maar vooral aan eene foort van dit diereng>:flacht, welke in Noordamerika, waar zij gevonden wordt, den naam van conepate voert, en in het hoogd. met dien van Punk beftempcld wordt : het zwarle ftinkdier is met viil wi’te ff repen fraai ge te ekend.
Should be:
STINKDIER, z. n., o., des stinkdiers , of van het stinkdier; meerv. stinkdieren. Verkleinw. stinkdier-tje. Van stinken en dier. Dezen naam geeft men aan een bijzonder geslacht van dieren, dat uit de Civetkat, den Ichneumon, en nog 21 andere soorten, bestaat, maar vooral aan eene soort van dit dierengeslacht, welke in Noordamerika, waar zij gevonden wordt, den naam van conepate voert, en in het hoogd. met dien van stunk bestempeld wordt : het zwarle stinkdier is met vijf witte strepen fraai geteekend.
I guess some serious improvement is needed in both base characters definition as related to the time and place where the books were initially produced, as well as serious dictionary augmentation, with language variants again related to the timeframe: not one language is the same in spelling, style and grammar after 100 years.