Unlocking Historical Archives with AI: Opportunities and Challenges

Recent advances in AI have made it feasible to automatically analyse unstructured content at scale, including large collections of cultural heritage data that come in the form of texts and/or images.

At this event you will have the chance to hear from a range of expert speakers exploring the various ways in which AI could disrupt how we store, manage and present archives and collections.

Through lightning talks and a panel discussion attendees will find out about:

• the opportunities, challenges and risks that AI presents to researchers and practitioners working with archives;

• how AI can drive the greater accessibility and utility of archives for new groups of users, including students, stakeholder communities and the wider public
• what future archives might look like.

Researchers, who were part of the AHRC-funded project Our Heritage, Our Stories, will discuss natural language processing (NLP) methods, which were developed to make the metadata in community archives more searchable. Similarly, the MediaQuery project team will highlight how they were able to enrich the content of audio-visual data with annotations automatically produced by AI models.

You will also hear from practitioners from University of Manchester libraries and archives, who will provide insights in how AI can and will be used to make archives and library collections more digitally accessible.

Before the talks and discussions, attendees can view the AI at Manchester exhibition in the Samuel Alexander glass corridor, which showcases AI research being undertaken by University of Manchester early-career researchers.

This event will be chaired and moderated by Constance Smith (Deputy Director, Creative Manchester) and Riza Batista-Navarro (Creative Industries and Innovation/CreaTech Theme Lead, Creative Manchester).

Agenda

12:30 - 13:00: Lunch, registration & viewing of AI at Manchester exhibition

13:00 - 13:10: Welcome from Creative Manchester by Dr Riza Batista-Navarro

13:10 - 14:00: Lightning talks with Dr Ben Wiggins, Prof Hannah Barker, Dr Riza Batista-Navarro, Dr Thomas Flavel and Prof Guyda Armstrong

14:00 - 14:15: Audience Q&A

14:15 - 15:00: Panel discussion with Dr Constance Smith (Moderator), Dr Ben Wiggins, Prof Hannah Barker, Dr Riza Batista-Navarro and Rachel Hetherington

15:00 - 15:15: Digital archives at the University of Manchester Library with Gail Millin-Chalabi

15:15 - 15:30: Closing words

Speakers

Ben Wiggins (Senior Lecturer of History and Library and Archive Studies)

Hannah Barker (Professor of British History)

Riza Batista-Navarro (Senior Lecturer in Text Mining and Creative Industries and Innovation/CreaTech Research Theme Lead, Creative Manchester)

Thomas Flavel (Research Associate, Creative Manchester)

Guyda Armstrong (Director of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library)

Gail Millin-Chalabi (Head of Digital Reach, The University of Manchester Library)

Rachel Hetherington (Community Archivist, Manchester Histories)

Accessibility

If you have particular access or dietary needs, please let us know in advance by providing details when registering for your ticket or by emailing creative@manchester.ac.uk

About Creative Manchester

Creative Manchester is an interdisciplinary research platform based at The University of Manchester. The platform champions research in creativity and creative practice, bringing together research communities with external stakeholders to explore new research areas and address strategic opportunities. Please visit the website for more information: Creative Manchester.

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