HIMANIS aimed at developing cost-effective solutions for querying large sets of handwriting document images. To this end, innovative keyword spotting, indexing and search methods have been developed, tested, adapted and/or scaled up to meet the real-world conditions that were required.

HIMANIS has been associated with Computer Science (A2iA, UPVLC and RUG), Humanities (IRHT) and Cultural Heritage (The European Library, the Archives Nationales of France and Bibliothèque Nationale de France) institutions and has produced technology to generate new, research-based knowledge from historical manuscripts.

As a challenging and particularly interesting case study, the large collection of registers produced by the French royal chancery (14th-15th c.) has been used as a testbed.

Implementing user feedback has also increased our understanding of the meanings that it holds for people and how they perceive, use and interpret it, thereby meeting societal challenges in promoting use and re-use.