Workshop: AI and Historical Newspapers
A number of important projects working with digitised newspaper collections have produced significant results in recent years. Simultaneously, advances in AI have made powerful text processing and computer vision methods more easily accessible. Cumulatively, we now understand more about how different researchers want to use digitised newspapers, and how that differs from work with other formats. Which issues in working with digitised periodicals are newly- or close to-solved, and what ‘hard problems’ remain?
In short, how do developments in the past few years change what’s possible with digitised periodicals?
This invitation-only workshop asks two key questions: a) what can we learn from the experiences of recent past and current projects, and b) what could a future ‘digitised newspapers’ project do with emergent and improved AI methods?
The workshop organisers, Mia Ridge and Beth Gaskell, will produce a short event report that we hope will provide evidence and inspiration for future funding and collaboration.
Practical information
Wednesday, May 10
- Venue: Murrell Barnes Suite, ground floor, British Medical Association (BMA), directions.
- Start time: lunch from 12pm, workshop from 1pm
- Finish time: 6pm
- Optional social drinks/dinner from 6pm
Thursday, May 11
- Venue: the Enigma Room, Alan Turing Institute, first floor, British Library, access via the front entrance of the British Library, directions.
- Start time: 9:15am (coffee from 9am)
- Finish time: 12:30, social lunch from 12:30 – 1:30pm.
COVID precautions
We know it’s a pain, but we’d like to request that each participant takes a COVID test the night before or morning of each day; please let us know if you test positive or are feeling ill and are unable to make it. Please also feel free to mask during the event if you wish. We really appreciate you making these efforts to keep everyone healthy.
The BMA venue (Wednesday) has air conditioning in the room, and the Turing venue (Thursday) will have a HEPA filter in the room. This is also good news for hayfever sufferers 🙂
Workshop participants
Confirmed participants include: Clemens Neudecker, Beth Gaskell, Emily Bell, Guillaume Bernard, Jean-Philippe Moreux, Jim Mussell, Kaspar Beelen, Laurel Brake, Marten During, Maud Ehrmann, Melvin Wevers, Mia Ridge, Ruth Ahnert, Thomas Smits, Yann Ryan.
From the Living with Machines team, Wednesday: Daniel Wilson, Griffith Rees, Jon Lawrence, Kalle Westerling, Katie McDonough, Maja Maricevic, Nilo Pedrazzini.
