We invite you to join us tomorrow for a free webinar from JSTOR: “Digitizing printed Arabic journals: is a scalable solution possible?” Anne Ray and John Kiplinger from ITHAKA and Matt Miller from the Open Islamicate Texts Initiative will discuss the project and share what the future holds for bringing these journals to researchers.
We welcome you to register, even if you can’t attend live; a recording link will be sent to all registrants after the session.
- Kristen Garlock
Associate Director, Education & Outreach
JSTOR
Webinar info & background
“Digitizing printed Arabic journals: is a scalable solution possible?”
Wednesday, October 30, 9:30 am – 10:15 am EDT
In 2017, JSTOR received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study processes for digitizing Arabic-language scholarly content. Our goal was to develop a workflow for scanning Arabic journals that is cost-efficient, feasible to implement at scale, and able to produce high-quality images, metadata, and fully searchable text.
In a recently released white paper, “Digitizing printed Arabic journals: is a scalable solution possible?,” ITHAKA’s Anne Ray, Senior Licensing Editor, and John Kiplinger, Director of Production, contextualize JSTOR’s investigation in the broader landscape of digital scholarly journal literature in Arabic, document our approach and findings from this project, and report on some areas for further research. Among its conclusions, the paper establishes that it is possible to digitize Arabic language journals with a high degree of accuracy, and that cost could be reduced through continuous improvements in the optical character recognition software engine. This exploration was conducted in collaboration with the American University in Beirut and the Open Islamicate Text Initiative. Tuesday’s webinar will provide an overview and discussion of the project findings.