Artificial Intelligence and Archives: What Comes Next? (AURA project)

An AURA workshop bringing together data creators, archivists & users in the archive circuit, with the aim to plan new projects on AI & Archives.

Archives are meant to be used, not locked away. A central problem is that most born-digital archives are closed to users due to privacy, copyright or technical issues. Even when access is possible (as in the case of web archives), users often need to physically travel to repositories rather than consult materials remotely. In order to unlock cultural assets, we need to bring the best minds together and harness the latest technology.

At present, applying Artificial Intelligence to archives remains at the exploratory stage. Yet, automation is no longer a choice, it is a necessity. AI can be used to separate personal and business emails and improve accessibility to non-confidential records; identify sections of documents that refer to personal data allowing partial views or limited access to the archival content; extract named entities (people names, dates, events) from archives and link them to external sources.

This final workshop of the AURA project will bring together all key actors in the archive “circuit”: from creators of data, to archivists and to users (thereby crossing the boundaries between Computer Scientists and Humanities Scholars) with the aim of discussing Artificial Intelligence and Archives. Workshop 3 is organised by the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture & Society with the AURA project team.

About the AURA project: AURA (Archives in the UK/ Republic of Ireland and AI) is a network funded by the AHRC and the Irish Research Council. Join the AURA mailing list to receive the latest news and updates.