Context
The Archives of the European Parliament (EP), established in 1952, hold the historical memory of the institution. However, this project, sponsored by the Director for Innovation and Central Services and overseen by the Head of the Archives Unit, aims to expand public access beyond internal archives. The project leverages the EP’s upcoming relocation to a new building with a public reading room and visitor centre. This physical move presents a strategic opportunity to unlock the EP’s cultural heritage archives for a wider audience.
Objectives
The project’s core objective is to increase the EP’s capacity to utilise its public legislative archives. This will be achieved by creating a centralised search infrastructure with functionalities that cater to users with varying levels of expertise. By employing natural language processing and other advanced AI functionalities, the project seeks to expedite research and present retrieved documents in a user-friendly format. This will not only enhance accessibility for historians and students, but also raise awareness among European citizens, particularly younger generations, about the EP’s crucial role in European democracy.
Implementation
The project is structured around two main areas. First, it focuses on integrating the existing archive management system with the knowledge management system. This will allow for centralised access to all public legislative archive holdings from 1952 onwards. Second, the project utilises advanced AI technologies to streamline research and refine retrieved documents. These functionalities will be readily available through a user-friendly dashboard.
A significant challenge lies in managing the backlog of paper-based acquisitions that accumulated during the pandemic. To address this, the project aims to automate the ingestion of digitally born documents, freeing up resources for processing the paper archives. Overall project success will be measured by user engagement, tracked through the number of internal and external user searches conducted through the dashboard.