As a controlled enabler for Historic Records’ core services we utilise AI whenever it benefits our customers to do so. But only then. While committed to embracing the obvious advantages that AI brings, it is not necessarily the best solution for every transcription or digitisation project, at least not yet. What is more, for even the most straightforward archival material AI is only part of the solution; a powerful heavy-lifting tool, no question, but deployed in support of our production and QA experts, not in their stead. We believe our ability to make this suitability assessment is how we differentiate and add value.
Our AI-enabled approach is adopted primarily for transcription projects and, specifically, for structured data extraction from unstructured historic documents, whether handwritten or printed text. The process combines digitisation, AI transcription, field-level parsing, and human validation to convert unstructured content into curated data records within a structured database. The curation element is defined by our customers, who decide which data fields they require, so that the relevant prompts can be written to extract only those particular fields from the original document.
An AI transcription project can have a number of stages. Some of these stages might already have been completed prior to our involvement. For example, we are increasingly asked to extract and produce records from documents that have already been digitised, often some time ago, as archives revisit those collections for which, pre-AI, transcription was not a viable option. That said, we do offer high-quality digitisation services if required.
Typically the key stages for AI-enabled data extraction include:
For customers who believe that their archival content is unsuited to AI (most likely very faint, illegible, or highly inconsistent handwritten text), or who for policy reasons prefer not to use AI, please visit our separate transcription page for information about our manual transcription service. We have already transcribed more than 100 million records through this option. We believe it is important to retain both the manual and AI-enabled approaches and, as part of our service, we can help advise which is best suited to your particular archival collections on a project-by-project basis.
If you would like to know more, please contact us for a free consultation and quote.