The Dutch Prize Papers Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is developed by the Huygens Institute and the KNAW
Humanities Cluster Department of Digital Infrastructure. The development of the VRE was made
possible by a grant of the Samenwerkende Maritieme Fondsen Foundation (
www.samenwerkendemaritiemefondsen.nl).
Disclaimer
This VRE is aimed at allowing the user
to browse through a selection from the Prize Papers collection. However, in the current release the
functionalities of the VRE (its search options and overall scope) are still limited, and search
results are suboptimal. Future releases, which will be announced on this page, will improve the VRE’s functionalities and search options. Annotation and
transcription tools are not available in the current release.
Search options
Search and filter options are listed in the panel on the left side of the
screen; results will be displayed on the right side of the screen. Filters can be used to further
refine one’s search results. The button ‘clear all filters’ will remove all filters (and therefore
results).
Text search The free text search is based on the automatic transcription of the text on
each scan. The transcription is based on HTR (Handwritten Text Recogntion).
Currently, a text search on individual terms delivers the best results, e.g. ‘Anna’ or ‘Sugar’. The
use of a tilde (~) will increase the number of search results, as it allows for some spelling
variation in the chosen search term (it adds one edit-distance to the term). For instance, when one
enters ‘Amsterdam~’, the VRE will return both results including ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Amfterdame’. Note:
Because the transcription of in particular handwritten text is still in development (see disclaimer
above), in many cases search results will contain errors (wrong transcription will lead to false
search results) or will be incomplete. New releases of the VRE will improve the search
results.
Filters options
Based on metadata provided by The National Archives (
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk ), the VRE allows the user to filter the search results by series, ship
name(s), ship master(s), and capture date.
Series
This filter offers the possibility to filter for images from the selected HCA 30/32
inventory numbers. This filter can be opened by clicking on prize papers. Through clicking on a
specific inventory number, search results will be limited to that specific inventory number. Please consult The National Archives Catalogue for renumbered records.
Ship name
This filter allows the user to filter for a specific ship (if a place of origin
is known it is mentioned behind the ship name in brackets; ship names in more than one language are
listed next to each other). After pressing the button ‘Clear all filters’, this filter can be used in two ways. 1) by entering a ship name in the
search box (here too a tilde (‘~’) can be used to increase the number of results, see text search
above). 2) By ticking the box of a specific ship (multiple boxes may be ticked). Please press ‘view
more’ to see more ship names.
Ship master
This filter allows one to filter on the name of the master of a ship. If known
his place of origin is mentioned behind the captain’s name (between brackets). After pressing the button ‘Clear all filters’, this filter functions
in a similar way as the ship name filter, one can search for a specific name or tick a box in front
of name.
Capture date
By sliding the two slider bullets it is possible to filter for a period in
which the documents in question were captured, or even a specific year (the latter can be achieved
by sliding the two bullets close to each other).
Language
This option allows one to filter for a specific language. As it is only based on
printed texts such as newspapers, it will not yield good results for handwritten texts.
Scan detail page
When clicking on an image on the results page you will enter the scan
detail page. On this as well as a transcription of the text. The transcription is based on HTR technology
(automatic transcription of handwritten text). Improved HTR transcription layers will be
implemented in future releases. Using the arrow left and right of the image it is possible to scroll
through the inventory number of which the selected scan is a part of. Below the displayed image
thumbnails of adjacent images are shown. Above the scan various annotation and comment ‘tools’ are
shown. These tools are not yet functional.
