Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies

In this Early Career Research project, Dr. Spencer Dean Stewart at Purdue University School of Information Studies will investigate restoring lost structure to digitized historical records. While massive digital archives exist, they often get flattened during digitization, lacking references to speakers in transcripts or recipients in letters. This project will use Generative AI to create a structural recovery framework that automatically identifies these relationships while preserving archival accuracy and transparency. In partnership with Purdue University Archives and Special Collections and a team of external disciplinary consultants at major U.S. institutions, the project will create a generalizable and reproducible AI workflow, deploy it on three case studies, and produce online modules to make the tools more accessible to others.