# Historical Document Processing: Historical Document Processing: A Survey of Techniques, Tools, and Trends

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.06300 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06300/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Feb 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Chronicles-OCR: A Cross-Temporal Perception Benchmark for the Evolutionary Trajectory of Chinese Characters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11960/) (2026)
- [Studying Illustrations in Manuscripts: An Efficient Deep-Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05269/) (2025)
- [Conversational Retrieval and On-the-Fly Knowledge Modeling of Historical Penitentiary Repression Records](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08459/) (2026)
- [A Visual Classification Dataset and Model Evaluation for Historical Manuscript Illustrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33449/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Historical Document Processing is the process of digitizing written material from the past for future use by historians and other scholars. It incorporates algorithms and software tools from various subfields of computer science, including computer vision, document analysis and recognition, natural language processing, and machine learning, to convert images of ancient manuscripts, letters, diaries, and early printed texts automatically into a digital format usable in data mining and information retrieval systems. Within the past twenty years, as libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions have scanned an increasing volume of their historical document archives, the need to transcribe the full text from these collections has become acute. Since Historical Document Processing encompasses multiple sub-domains of computer science, knowledge relevant to its purpose is scattered across numerous journals and conference proceedings. This paper surveys the major phases of, standard algorithms, tools, and datasets in the field of Historical Document Processing, discusses the results of a literature review, and finally suggests directions for further research.