Guides, tips, and tools for handwriting transcription, genealogy research, and document preservation.
The Coalition for Responsible AI in Genealogy has published five principles: accuracy, disclosure, privacy, education, and compliance. Here is how PenParse measures against each of them, including where we currently fall short.
We measured PenParse on 98 full pages of real handwriting with human-verified transcriptions. The average page comes out at roughly 95 percent character accuracy, and this post explains what that means for your documents.
We tested PenParse on 16 historical German documents in Kurrent script, scored against human-verified transcriptions. This post publishes every number we measured, including the failure rates no vendor usually admits to.
Modern AI can transcribe handwriting almost perfectly — until it confidently gets one word wrong. Here are the 8 best handwriting OCR tools in 2026, and the feature that actually matters.
Transkribus is powerful for historical-document archives but overkill for most users. Here are 6 alternatives — from no-setup web apps to LLMs — and which to pick for what.
Those handwritten recipe cards are irreplaceable. Here's how to turn them into digital text in minutes, not hours.
We compared the top OCR tools for genealogy researchers. Here's what works, what doesn't, and which tool is right for your project.
Old family letters are irreplaceable — but paper doesn't last forever. Here's how to preserve them digitally before it's too late.
Transkribus gives you 50 free pages a month. Here's when that's the right tool for family history — and when it's overkill.
Old cursive can feel like a foreign language. Here's how to decode it — and how AI can do the heavy lifting.