AURA (Archives in the UK/ Republic of Ireland & AI): Bringing together Digital Humanists, Computer Scientists & stakeholders to unlock cultural assets

The AURA network brings together Digital Humanists, Computer Scientists, archivists and other stakeholders to unlock cultural assets held in "dark" digital archives currently closed to users. Not so long ago, historians, literary scholars and other scholars would read letters and other papers preserved in Special Collections Libraries. Of course, this analogue world has not disappeared, but the digital revolution has profoundly changed the way we encounter archives. Born-digital archives are now better preserved and managed thanks to the development of open-access and commercial software. Yet, preserving born-digital records is not enough. We also need access to these archival materials, in order to produce new knowledge and foster public engagement.

Archives are meant to be used, not locked away. A central problem is that most born-digital archives are closed to users due to privacy, copyright or technical issues. Even when access is possible (as in the case of web archives), users often need to physically travel to repositories rather than consult materials remotely. In order to unlock cultural assets, we need to bring the best minds together and harness the latest technology.

At present, applying Artificial Intelligence to archives remains at the exploratory stage. Yet, automation is no longer a choice, it is a necessity. AI can be used to separate personal and business emails and improve accessibility to non-confidential records; identify sections of documents that refer to personal data allowing partial views or limited access to the archival content; extract named entities (people names, dates, events) from archives and link them to external sources.

While access to digital archives is essential, we also need to anticipate the moment when born-digital records will be more accessible. To make sense of this mass of data, new methodologies are urgently needed, combining traditional humanistic methods with data-rich approaches. Collaborations between Humanities scholars, Computer Scientists, archivists and other stakeholders are therefore essential to make archives more accessible, but also to design new methodologies to analyse huge amounts of data.

The network will focus on three major themes, that will be explored in each of the three workshops: "Open Data versus Privacy" (Workshop 1 in Dublin); "AI and Archives: Current Challenges and Prospects of Born-digital archives" (Workshop 2 in London); "AI and Archives: What comes next?" (Workshop 3 in Edinburgh).

The workshops will be carefully structured to include a mix of short presentations, speed meetings with interdisciplinary teams to discuss a specific question relating to the overall workshop theme, and practical activities designed to lead to mutually beneficial, sustainable collaborations. We will also create wiki pages for each workshop to foster asynchronous discussion, and build on the participation of people that cannot be onsite. In addition, a project website will keep track of all the network activities in the form of reports, blog posts and recordings of presentations. Associated social media, as well as a dedicated listserv, will help us connect with interested parties - in academia, archival institutions and beyond.

First, the AURA network will impact on government as creators of records, including born-digital records. In the UK, these records need to be transferred for permanent preservation after twenty years (rather than the previous thirty years). This changing rule means that archival institutions now face an incoming flood of digital records created by government at the turn of the twenty-first century, a key period in the transition from print to digital. Emails largely replaced letters, electronic documents were no longer systematically printed out. With this mass of data, it is no longer possible to manually review individual records to identify confidential or sensitive materials. Automation is becoming essential for appraisal and selection. Policy makers will join us for network activities, and a policy paper (to be completed after Workshop 1) will allow us to consolidate our engagement between government, archives, and academics. We will also benefit from the support of the International Council on Archives (Project Partner), an international non-profit organisation with close links to policy makers and governing bodies.

Second, AURA will benefit archivists, including early-career archivists whose work is increasingly dominated by digital records. Indeed, many archivists are now de facto digital archivists. Sharing expertise with Computer Scientists and Humanities Scholars will benefit these archivists and their institutions in multiple ways. In their letters of support for the network, our project partners articulate two main kinds of benefits. At the stage of appraisal and selection, computational methods are increasingly viewed as essential. The next step is to provide access to born-digital archives, and here again, automation is central to identify non-problematic records that can be made available. As one of our partners writes, "this project is a timely and vital one to ensure that we can continue working towards making our collections available for the public good and to serve our researchers."

Alongside The National Archives, our non-academic project partners include The National Library of Ireland; The National Library of Scotland; the British Library; the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the International Council on Archives. There are many smaller institutions that would benefit from our network, and the network activities will include a number of places for additional participants to join us.

By bringing Computer Scientists, Humanities scholars, archivists and policy makers together, the AURA network will ensure that the resulting scholarship is informed by the needs of all the actors of the archive "circuit." The two special issues of journals will be academically rigorous but engaged with the practical experience of working in non-academic institutions. Articles will be written in a clear style for this multi-disciplinary audience.

Third, the AURA network will benefit a wider audience. Archives are of course not reserved to academic researchers. For example, many family historians will be interested in the changing nature of sources (from print to digital) and in new methods to analyse digital archives. Our project partners already do extensive public engagement work, and will promote the network to this wide audience. The National Library of Ireland will host a tour of their literary exhibitions in conjunction with the first workshop in Dublin. This will be a good way to engage with a broad audience on the topic of the changing nature of literary collections in the twenty-first century.

We will publicise our discussions via a project website and wiki pages to keep track of all the activities developed in the project in the form of reports, blog posts and recordings of presentations. We will also produce two articles on the issue of cultural assets locked to the public. We will link these outputs to the UNESCO #WorldHeritage campaign to foster a two-way dialogue with the general public.