Digital Daily Kent Stater: Crowd Sourced Text Correction Feature

As part of our ongoing commitment to working collaboratively with our online community, the Department of Special Collections and Archives is proud to introduce a crowd-sourcing feature for our digital archive. This will allow users anywhere in the world to help us edit the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) component of The Daily Kent Stater online. No scan of such a large quantity of text is ever perfect and this is your chance to help us fix translation issues that occur between the text of the newspaper and the OCR text on the left side of the web page.

How You Can Participate

1. Within the Daily Kent Stater Digital Archive, before you begin making corrections, you must first create an account by clicking on the link “Register” at the top left-hand side of the page.

• When registering, you will be prompted to give your name and email address, and create a display or user name as well as a password. 
• Once you have filled out this information, you will receive an email with a link that activates your account and completes the registration process. You can now log in and make corrections to the OCR portion of the Stater. 
• If you already have an account, you can click “Log in” to get started.

2. Within the Daily Kent Stater Digital Archive you can begin making corrections to OCR errors you may encounter.

• When you highlight an article and notice a problem with the text, you should click on the link above the OCR text on the left-hand side that says, “Correct this text.”
• The article’s content will then appear line-by-line in individual text boxes on the left mirrored by red boxes around the newspaper text on the right.
• You can then click on the line you wish to edit and make your corrections.
• Click save if you want to continue making edits, or save and exit if you are finished.
• You may press cancel at any time to undo your editing. After clicking save, you will return to normal viewing mode. 

3. Please Note: In 2022, Kent State University Libraries, Special Collections & Archives, with support from the Student Media Advisory Board, began a project to redact from the OCR the names of people that appeared in the Daily Kent Stater police blotter. This decision was made in accordance with trends in digital newspaper publishing to redact older, minor crime stories that negatively impact the subjects’ ability to gain employment, among other potential consequences. Names in the OCR were replaced with the text, [name redacted]. Neither the original newspapers nor the scans of the newspapers have been altered in any way, only the OCR. We ask that you please leave these names redacted.

4. Questions? Concerns? Please contact Special Collections & Archives by email or phone: specialcollections [at] kent.edu; 330-672-2270