University of Toronto's LiPaD Project to Digitize Parliamentary Debates

The University of Toronto's UofT News service published an article last week about the LiPaD project at the school.

It is a project to digitize and make public Canada’s federal parliamentary debates going back to the beginning of the 20th century:

"With a click, users can also find more information on parliamentarians, such as their party affiliation and gender. The site is continually adding more information on members, including demographic profiles and election outcomes."

"The process began with Canadiana, a non-profit heritage coalition, which scanned every page of the Hansard and posted them online. But as pictures instead of text, the documents could not be searched with keywords."

The article describes how project participants tackled problems such as bits of dirt or smudges in the print that make optical character recognition difficult.

LiPaD is also adding transcripts of parliamentary committees.