Navigating The Storm: Impact, Emop, And Agile Steering Standards

This article discusses two major initiatives tasked with developing tools to improve optical character recognition (OCR) or the mechanical keying of texts that are digitally available only as page images. The two initiatives are the IMProving ACcess to Text Project in Europe and the Early Modern OCR Project in the USA. Because of dealing with a multilayered problem like OCR technologies and having to collaborate with radically interdisciplinary and international team members, the two projects developed techniques that we call Agile Project Management, outlined in this essay with rationales for their use.