**3. Structure of the Ottoman Registers**

In this research, we concentrated on the Nicaea district registers, NFS.d. 1411 and 1452. They are digitally available at the Turkish Presidency State Archives of the Republic of Turkey—Department of Ottoman Archives in jpeg format. We strive to implement an automatic reading method for registers from different precincts of the empire, which are obtained in the mid-nineteenth century. These registers include comprehensive demographic data on the male population in the households, i.e., names, occupations, ages and family relations. Females were neither counted nor recorded in these records. The registers were cataloged and gradually provided for research since 2011. There are approximately 11,000 registers. In this research, we study the generic characteristics of these manuscripts. The size of a digitized page in the recordings was 2210 × 3000 pixels. The first object type is the symbol marking the beginning of a populated place. It is seen in most of the registers and can mark the end of a previous village and start of a new one (see Figure 1). The other objects are individuals or households counted in the register, and they include demographic information about them. If an individual is the first person of a household, in the top of the object, there are two numbers (right and left) showing the number of the household and individual. Otherwise, they put only one number on top of the object showing the number of the individual inside the populated place. In the last line of all objects, the age of individuals is written. These registers sometimes updated by drawing a line on the people when they go to military service or decease. Sometimes the updates mistakenly connect the individual with a neighboring person, which might result in malfunctions in the information retrieval algorithms [4] (see Figure 2).

**Figure 1.** A population start, an individual and a household image samples are demonstrated. In the top, the populated place starting object, in the right bottom, a household and in the left bottom of the image, an individual object is shown.

**Figure 2.** An example update drawn in red color is shown.
