AI and Archives: Utilizing AI to Make Retroactive Finding Aid Conversion Simpler

The University of Regina Archives and Special Collections has been working over the past few years to establish a database for its archival holdings which provides a better and more user-friendly archival experience. AtoM, or Access to Memory, is an open-sourced software which uses archival descriptive standards to code and catalogue archival collections, and requires a specific template, in CSV or XML format, in order to work. While this is, in essence, not an issue for processing and cataloguing archival collections on a go-forward basis, the UofR Archives also has over 2000 finding aids which have been created in Word/PDF format and are not conducive to AtoM's mandatory upload formats. With budget and staffing constraints, an innovative and flexible approach to converting these finding aids was necessary to ensure full collection representation to researchers. Using Gemini and Google AI Studio, we have created a method to take these old finding aids and convert them into workable CSV/XML documents, with appropriate metadata mapped correctly. This presentation aims to provide the audience with a demonstration of this AI method, with the aim of providing the following learning outcomes: 1: Ability to identify, based on the home institution's cataloguing needs, the appropriate metadata fields necessary for generating a working AI prompt compatible with the institution’s database. 2: Generation of a working AI prompt which is flexible and customizable. 3: Techniques for reviewing and correcting data outputs, including editing prompts for improved accuracy. Like all other tools at our disposal, AI is not a blanket fix, but a method to maximize limited institutional resources. Instead of staff spending hundreds of hours converting finding aids "by hand" into the acceptable format, AI can be used to drastically reduce the hours needed, allowing materials to be accessible and searchable by researchers. Human intervention is still required for accuracy and intervention as well as creating standardized language for AI use, however, if used effectively and responsibly, AI can be a powerful tool in the information professional's toolbox.