In Archion’s most recent newsletter, they announced text recognition is now available for many of their church records. This is exciting for many people who find reading old German Gothic handwriting difficult, if not impossible.
When enabled, this feature shows the transcription for a record you’re viewing right in the viewer. Click on the notepad icon to enable the transcription.
Of course, it does not translate it to English, if that is your language of choice.
This feature is not yet available for all church books available on Archion. Keep checking back, as more become available. It is important to understand that the transcriptions are AI-generated and are prone to errors, like any other tool. Be sure to verify the results. You can see above, there are some errors.
Archion is a subscription-based website that holds digitized images of church records, primarily Lutheran, but also some Catholic, Mennonite, and civil records. The collection is not name-searchable, so one must know the town or parish of interest.
I hope you find this helpful!
Lind Street Research 