As we work towards a re-release of full text search on Open Library (peek), we’ve seen much more of the OCR output of our book scans. Depending on the text, the OCR can range from 99% perfect to 99% covered in gobbledygook. Hence my delight to see oldweather.org from the Zooniverse Project, where you and I can “help improve reconstructions of past weather and climate across the world by finding and recording historical weather observations in handwritten Royal Navy ship logs.”
Why computers can’t do the job from National Maritime Museum on Vimeo.