EABH - Conferenza "AI & Archives"
From documents to data and back: a friendship journey with AI to improve searchability in historical archives
The Mediobanca Historical Archive is inventoried, analytically described, and dematerialised thanks to the digitisation of documents. It is available online, and open to everyone.
In an effort to enhance the researcher’s user experience and surpass the limitations of traditional archival description as defined by the ISAD(G) standard, the Mediobanca archive has decided to conduct a series of experiments utilising Transkribus to automatically transcribe the “Corporate Records” that, despite its notable significance, has been subject to infrequent consultation
The training of dedicated layout and text recognition models within Transkribus has enabled to easily obtain the full transcription of the minutes that will be integrated with Archival descriptions.
Furthermore, the Mediobanca archive has showcased the work dedicated to the “Credit Department” subfond, which encompasses documents related to granted loans. Several factors contribute to the restricted utilisation of this subfond, including their inherently technical nature, the extensive range of sources, and the intricate archival structures.
Notably, the development of interactive relational maps and graphs has significantly enhanced the usability of data derived from approximately 4,000 loans./p>
The advent of AI has empowered archivists with new tools to enhance their traditional work and give a new voice to historical collections that have been silent until today
The speech has been given in cooperation with dr.ssa Sara Mansutti of READ-COOP European Cooperative Society, the devoloper of Transkribus.
