Digital Archives, Shitty OCR, and the Future of Archival Research - Data Hub Tech Talk

Presenter: Dr. Zachary Turpin, University of Idaho, Associate Professor of English
Presented: 2/6/2024

These days, academic scholars and independent researchers are regularly stunning readers and overturning paradigms in their fields by rediscovering lost books, manuscripts, poems, and all sorts of forgotten items in the archives—often the digital archives. In a way, it is a new age of archival rediscovery.

But how do you navigate archives, exactly? What are the most useful methods, particularly in an increasingly digital environment? And how do you deal with the major problem plaguing digital archival researchers today: shitty OCR, the garbled plaintext that stands between you and your longed-for literary treasure? In this talk, Dr. Zachary Turpin will offer some solutions, share his experiences in archives physical and digital, and forecast the future of archival research.