Artificial Intelligence and Archives: An Alliance for Holding the Past and to inform the Future

The digitization of information brings significant implications for the fields of archives and archival theory. As we move from managing paper records to handling large, linked groups of data, we are seeing a change in the idea of what constitutes an archive. Artificial intelligence (AI), with its ability to make big changes, has placed itself at the heart of this move, posing new challenges and opportunities for archivists and researchers. A first case of this convergence can be seen in the digitization of ancient parchment documents, pivotal communication tools in the past and crucial elements of our cultural heritage. By automating the analysis of vast repositories of scanned parchments, this lightweight DL-based system promises to breathe new life into ancient documents, many of which have been rendered inaccessible due to the deterioration of the medium.