Applying AI to Digital Archives: Trust, Collaboration and Shared Professional Ethics

Applying AI to Digital Archives: Trust, Collaboration and Shared Professional Ethics

Archives

Policy makers generate digital records every single day, a fraction of which is preserved in archival repositories. However, accessing these archives is often challenging due to various factors like data protection, sensitivity, and copyright. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds promise for enhancing archive accessibility, its implementation remains experimental. This article contends that gaps in skills and communication exacerbate these challenges. Despite sharing professional ethics, civil servants, archivists, and academics often fail to communicate effectively, fostering mistrust. This lack of trust extends to AI technology, further hindering its integration into archival practices. The article suggests that highlighting shared professional ethics can foster collaboration, ultimately building trust in AI tools. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with thirty professionals spanning government, archiving, history, digital humanities, and computer science, the research fills a gap by addressing access rather than just preservation of digital records, and by including perspectives of record creators alongside archivists. It emphasizes the importance of trust and collaboration across the entire archival process, from record creation to user access.

Lise, Jaillant
Rees, Arran

Oxford University Press

2023-05

Katherine Weiss

Journal Article

DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqac073

Jaillant, Lise, and Arran Rees. “Applying AI to Digital Archives: Trust, Collaboration and Shared Professional Ethics.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38, no. 2 (2023): 571–585.