Century-old ledgers, trade registers and accounts contain vast amounts of information about trade, economics and daily life. Although many of these records have now been digitized as scans, they are often still barely searchable or analyzable.
In fact, tables and other complex layouts pose a major problem for existing AI and transcription software.
The research project FORTES - Framework for Open Research on Trade and Economic Sources - aims to change that. The project led by VU assistant professor of Accounting Sabine Go receives funding within the TDCC 2025 call of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Historical data automatically readable
FORTES is developing open-source methods that can automatically convert handwritten historical tables into structured and analyzable data. In doing so, the project is working with the books of the Amsterdam Wisselbank and the records of the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie, among others. These are collections of great importance to the economic and social history of the Netherlands and its trade networks in Europe and beyond.
The new methods will soon enable researchers to analyze historical transactions, reconstruct trade networks and study economic developments over long periods on a large scale. The techniques developed within FORTES will also be tested on a variety of other sources, such as population registers, patient records, cadastral tables and historical weather data, so that they are widely applicable and heritage institutions can reuse them to make their collections more accessible to researchers, students and the general public.
The project will begin in the fall of 2026 and run for 24 months. In addition to technical development, FORTES is strongly committed to collaboration and knowledge sharing. The project organizes trainings, workshops and practical manuals for researchers and heritage professionals. All software, models and datasets will be made openly available so that other researchers and institutions can reuse and further develop the methods.
The project team consists of Sabine Go (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / International Institute of Social History), Gerhard de Kok and Lodewijk Petram (Huygens Institute), Leon van Wissen (University of Amsterdam) and Christiaan van Bochove (Utrecht University). Within FORTES there is collaboration with partners including Maastricht University, Radboud University, Universität Regensburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Stadsarchief Amsterdam and the Zeeuws Archief.