We are READ-COOP

A European Cooperative Society with more than 100 Members globally.

 

The Origins of READ-COOP

READ-COOP SCE with limited liability was established on 1 July 2019, to sustain and further develop the Transkribus platform. Transkribus was developed within the Horizon 2020 “READ” EU project by a consortium of leading research groups from all over Europe, headed by the University of Innsbruck. See our milestones >>

What we stand for

Open to all institutions and individuals interested in historical documents

Democratically organized with a Board of Directors and a General Meeting

Discounts on all products and services for members

Direct benefits instead of shareholder value – stakeholders matter.

Customers can be owners and owners can be  customers.

Why a Cooperative?

We are convinced that the organisational form of a European Cooperative Society enables us to carry out our work in a highly efficient, open, and democratic way.

READ-COOP is based on the EU directive on the European Cooperative Society (SCE) but it is open to members outside of the European Community as well.

We have more than 80 Members

What is an SCE?

With this governance model we are able to

Support humanities scholars, archives, libraries and the general public in transcribing, recognising and searching historical documents with cutting edge technology

Run a community driven platform for gathering and sharing documents, transcriptions, technology, and knowledge among members and the public

Constantly improve technologies such as text recognition, layout analysis, and table recognition in close cooperation with research groups and technology providers

Board

READ-COOP is run by the board of directors consisting of 

Günter Mühlberger

University of Innsbruck

Chair

Andy Stauder 

READ-COOP SCE

Managing director

Melissa Terras

University of Edinburgh

Scholarly director

Annemieke Romein

Community director

Florian Stauder 

Operations director

The board is supervised and elected by the General meeting of all members, which meets at least once a year.

Statutes of READ-COOP

The statutes of READ-COOP SCE are the legal basis for our work. Please read them carefully. They are compliant with the EU directive on European Cooperatives as well as with national Austrian legislation and related laws. They were carefully set up with support from the Raiffeisen Association and approved by the Landesgericht Innsbruck (State Court of Tyrol). The official registration number of READ-COOP SCE with limited liability is FN 520187g, our VAT ID is ATU74983823.

German and English version of the READ-COOP statutes

Official registration letter – in German

Join us and become a member