Promise and Peril of Handwritten Text Recognition & Artificial Intelligence in Archives

Date: October 1st, 2025

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm EST

Ben and Sara Brumfield, creators of From the Page, will be speaking about using AI for transcription of archival documents. Not all transcription is the same. Documents transcribed by humans or different kinds of AI have different strengths and weaknesses that affect how archives can use them responsibly. We'll go deep into three transcription methods: human transcription by staff or volunteers, handwritten text recognition via tools like Transkribus, and generative text from large language models like ChatGPT. Then we'll talk about where AI works and where it fails. Finally, we'll look at two ways we are trying to implement responsible AI to help humans -- both volunteers and staff -- in FromThePage.

This is a free event and no registration is required! Just visit the link below at the date and time of the event to participate.

Meeting Link: https://ecu.webex.com/ecu/j.php?MTID=ma67f0fae4834aa872bb38159719c7012 

Meeting number: 2863 354 7342

Meeting password: JSixBswm342