Lise Jaillant

I am very pleased to share that the special issue on "When data turns into archives: making digital records more accessible with AI" has just been published in   AI & Society !   Developed as a key output of the LUSTRE project—funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)—this collection addresses the unique challenges and opportunities AI offers in unlocking archival data within the government sector and beyond.   The articles in this issue provide new interdisciplinary theoretical interpretations, apply research methodologies to diverse case studies, and explore the current and future role of AI in working with data and digital archives. Contributions span digital humanities, archival studies, cultural heritage studies, critical data studies, and computer science, with insights from both established experts and early-career professionals.   Highlights of this special issue include the following articles: AI to review government records: New work to ...

I am delighted to announce that we have submitted the complete manuscript of the edited collection Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage Organisations .  *UPDATE* The book will be published by UCL Press in 2025. Pre-order it HERE . Here is the table of contents: Introduction Lise Jaillant, Claire Warwick, Paul Gooding, Katherine Aske, Glen Layne-Worthey and J. Stephen Downie   Section 1: ‘The Role of AI in Preserving and Making Accessible Digitised and Born-digital Records’   1. The National Archives (UK ) Lise Jaillant, Katherine Aske, and Annalina Caputo 2. Computer Vision and Cultural Heritage Catherine Nicole Coleman 3. Machine Learning at the National Library of Norway Javier de la Rosa   Section 2: ‘Text and Beyond: AI applied to Text, Images and Audio-visual Archives’   4. From Preservation to Access and Beyond – The Role of AI in Audio-visual Archives Julia Noordegraaf an...

I am delighted to be the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project LUSTRE (Unlocking our Digital Past with Artificial Intelligence). LUSTRE seeks to better understand how AI can help improve the preservation, access to and usability of government archives produced in digital form.  Much public good could be derived from the analysis of government records, particularly records in digital form. Yet, accessing these data is a complex challenge that requires collaboration across multiple fields and professional sectors to overcome issues including confidentiality, privacy, national security, copyright, technological constraints, and the existence of a multiplicity of different structures, systems and applications.  The input of computer scientists who specialise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is essential to tackling this challenge. Indeed, AI can be used to identify sensitive materials in a mass of born-digital records to make non-sensitive materials accessible. AI can a...

  The next MLA (Modern Language Association) Annual Convention will be held from 5 to 8 January 2023 in San Francisco. The presidential theme is Working Conditions. As always, SHARP (the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) will organise a guaranteed session. We are inviting papers on the theme "Women and Book History." Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Leslie Howsam encouraged scholars to "make use of the powerful theory and flexible methodology of feminist analysis when we think about and investigate the history of books" (SHARP News, Vol. 7, number 4, Autumn 1998). This short article on "women and book history" still resonates today. We invite papers on (but not limited to): the theory and methodology of feminist book history; the study of women in the book trade and women book collectors; the analysis of women readers. All periods and geographical areas. Please send your abstract (250 words) and CV (2 pages) by Wedn...

I am thrilled to be the Principal Investigator (UK) for the Early Conflict Photography 1890-1918 and Visual AI ( EyCon ) project. EyCon aims at harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) reliant tools to analyse a large corpus of photographs, and the project’s database will include thousands of historical photographs documenting armed violence. EyCon is co-funded by AHRC/Labex Passés dans le Présent joint grant (more about the programme here ) and a Université de Paris Idex “chaire environnée”. Recent digitisation efforts of historical photographs by archival institutions have often been done in silo. This is an issue for researchers and archivists, but it also raises the question of public uses of history when it comes to contemporary perspectives on colonial/imperial warfare. Disconnected visual repositories reinforce deeply entrenched notions of national exceptionalism in France, Britain and in other states with a history of international interventionism and expansionism. Drawing on ad...

I am excited to be leading the AEOLIAN network (Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Organisations), funded by the New Developments for Digital Scholarship grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). More about the programme here . The AEOLIAN network project aims to develop artificial intelligence to help improve access to born-digital and digitised cultural records through a collaboration of UK and US partners. I will be working with Claire Warwick , Paul Gooding , Annalina Caputo , Glen Worthey , J. Stephen Downie and Ryan Dubnicek – as well as our Network Participants. Our Project Partners include the National Library of Scotland; the National Library of Wales; the Wellcome Collection; the History of Parliament Trust; Harvard’s Houghton Library; Yale’s Digital Preservation team and Music Library; Indiana University Libraries; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries; Educopia; Frick Collection (N...