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Session Summary

On October 3rd, 2024, I attended an engaging presentation entitled “Hands on History: EU Parliament Archives”, presented by Ludovic Délépine and Marco Amabilino. Their focus was on how artificial intelligence (AI) can revolutionize access to parliamentary documents. We started with a captivating video that briefly highlighted the question “who is Louise Weiss?” This significant figure in European integration intrigued me, especially since my master's thesis will explore similar themes. A standout aspect was the Archives Unit Dashboard of The Historical Archives, a tool that we also got to explore from home before the presentation. Now available for public download, users can search documents based on the metadata with options in the dashboard to filter by type, language, and year. It aims to democratize knowledge of European Parliament history and serve as a valuable tool for researchers and citizens alike. The presenters also presented technologies like Anthropic Claude and Constitutional AI, designed for multilingual archive exploration, stressing the need for deeper insights into document content, as metadata alone often lacks detail and that it will always require critical evaluation by the user. The presentation emphasized influential data organization techniques by Edgar Codd, a pioneer in data management. Sparck Jones, who worked on term frequency-inverse document frequency, was also mentioned.

As I work on my master's thesis about the role of women in the European Parliament, especially in Luxembourg, I see the EU archive and this ChatGPT-like tool have invaluable resources that will provide essential support for my research. After I asked my question about the helpfulness of the EU Archives in relation with my thesis in the Q&A session, one of the presenters offered guidance on accessing additional information about EU Archive for my thesis, which I greatly appreciated.

Session Review

The European Parliament's Archives Unit Dashboard is a useful digital platform that provides access to over 2,000,000 digitized documents from 1952 to 1994 including important records from the European Parliament and other key assemblies. The dashboard aims to democratize knowledge about the parliament's history offering valuable resources from researchers and the public. As users explore the site and its tools, they'll find 4 specialized sections tailored to different research needs which enhance the efficiency and straightforwardness of their searches.
Firstly, the EP Archives Overview Dashboard offers a detailed entry point to the European parliament's vast document collection. Using charts, it presents data that allows users to easily explore and understand the collections scope categorized by language document type, year, and start date. This visual organization helps users grasp the diversity and historical timeline of the records making it simpler to navigate the development of parliamentary documents over time and access a wide selection of materials from multiple perspectives. Secondly, the EP Archives Content Analysis Dashboard offers researchers access to significant collection of around 30,000 original European Parliament documents, covering motions in both written and oral questions from 1958 1984. It features advanced tools designed to enhance search efficiency and effectiveness. For example, users can utilize the “Top Words” feature, which presents frequently used terms in a word cloud or the “Select Top Words” option for direct searches of specific terms. Additionally, the “Dominant Topic” tool organizes documents into eleven main themes, making it easier to find specific content, while the “Related Documents” feature connects thematically or linguistically similar records. Also, to help visualize topic connections, the “Intertopic Distance Visualization” displays each topic as a circle, with the distances between them indicating thematic similarities. Then, there is the “Alternative Topic Visualization”, emphasizing word frequency within a specific subject as well as across the entire collection of documents. This tool helps users easily identify terms unique to a particular topic and those that are commonly found throughout the dataset. For the third section, there is the EP Archives Received Request Dashboard, that tracks all requests to the Archives Unit since 2020, revealing global interest in parliamentary records. An interactive map displays each country's request volume, highlighting which nations request documents most often. Annual statistics further categorize requests by organization type, such as European institutions, civil society groups, research labs, and national chambers. This breakdown showed strong collaboration and international involvement with the European Parliament archives. The final section features the Tool Dashboard, which offers two essential resources for researchers. One of these is the “Document Summarizer”, enabling users to import documents and generate brief summaries in Word or PDF formats, with adjustable lengths based on specified word counts. The other tool, the “Eurovoc Document Tagger”, serves to classify documents by assigning Eurovoc tags.

These features really enhance how I can access and use the European Parliament’s archives, making it easier to find, analyze, and request historical documents. By simplifying searches, these tools will help me dive deeper into Europe’s legislative history, making knowledge more accessible and enriching my understanding of the stories that shape our political landscape. This resource could be invaluable for my future master’s thesis, helping me gather the insights I need for my research.

Questions:

• How does using AI in archives raise ethical concerns about bias, transparency, and accountability, and what can archivists do to address these issues?

• What future opportunities do archivists have with AI, especially for managing digital records and helping underrepresented communities access them?
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