AEOLIAN (Artificial intelligence for cultural organisations)

FAIN: HC-278124-21

Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)
Glen Layne-Worthey (Project Director: August 2020 to present)

A series of meetings and case studies that will bring together a team of experts to develop new approaches to improving access to and use of digital archives that are currently private. The UK partner, Loughborough University, is requesting £47,987.70 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. 

AEOLIAN (Artificial intelligence for cultural organizations) focuses on born-digital and digitized collections with limited access due to privacy concerns (e.g. for email archives), copyright (e.g. for digital libraries), etc. AI shows real potential to address these issues. AEOLIAN’s 3 main objectives are: to make digital collections more accessible; to analyze these collections using innovative AI research methods; and to identify synergies and collaborative avenues between US and UK cultural organizations. AEOLIAN brings together humanists, computer scientists, archivists, librarians and others to transform digital archive access and use with machine learning and AI. We will organize 6 online workshops over 2 years focused on 5 case studies from US and UK cultural institutions, creating an international network of scholars and practitioners working with digital archives, and leading to a major report for an interdisciplinary audience and several agenda-setting publications.