---
dataset_info:
  features:
  - name: image
    dtype: image
  - name: alto
    dtype: string
  - name: filename
    dtype: string
  splits:
  - name: train
    num_bytes: 440129470
    num_examples: 350
  - name: val
    num_bytes: 58958626
    num_examples: 50
  - name: test
    num_bytes: 59181301
    num_examples: 50
  download_size: 554065486
  dataset_size: 558269397
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: data/train-*
  - split: val
    path: data/val-*
  - split: test
    path: data/test-*
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- de
tags:
- handwriting-text-recognition
- htr
- early-modern-german
- historical-documents
pretty_name: HTR Dataset ICFHR 2016
---

# HTR Dataset ICFHR 2016

## Dataset Description

The **HTR Dataset ICFHR 2016** is a historical document image dataset primarily intended for **Handwriting Text Recognition (HTR)** research and benchmarking.

This dataset was created as part of the European Commission's **READ project** (Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents) and consists of a subset of documents from the **Ratsprotokolle collection**, which contains minutes of council meetings held from 1470 to 1805.

The documents are written in **Early Modern German** and feature complex handwriting, making this a challenging resource for HTR algorithms. It was notably used in the HTR competition held at the **ICFHR 2016** conference.

## Data Structure

The dataset is distributed across two main archives: `Train-And-Val-ICFHR-2016.tgz` and `Test-ICFHR-2016.tgz`.

The training and validation sets comprise **400 pages**. The ground-truth transcription is provided at the line level within the standard **PAGE XML format** (not plain text transcripts). Each data instance generally includes a page image and the corresponding PAGE XML file.


## Dataset Creation

### Source Data

The data originates from the **Ratsprotokolle collection** (minutes of council meetings from 1470 to 1805).

### Creators

The primary creators of this specific dataset compilation are: **A.H. Toselli, V. Romero, M. Villegas, E. Vidal, and J.A. Sánchez**.

## License

The dataset is licensed under the **Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-4.0)** license.

## Citation

When using this dataset, please cite the original Zenodo record as follows:

```bibtex
@inproceedings{ToselliRomeroVillegasVidalSanchez2018,
  author    = {Toselli, A. H. and Romero, V. and Villegas, M. and Vidal, E. and S\'{a}nchez, J. A.},
  title     = {HTR Dataset ICFHR 2016},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  year      = {2018},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.1164045},
  url       = {[https://zenodo.org/records/1164045](https://zenodo.org/records/1164045)}
}