Abstract

As an employee of the Data Science Service of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, I can see at first hand how the digital archive landscape is changing every day and it is a fascinating development. The Photo Archive of the Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (bpk-Fotoarchiv) exemplifies the transformations and challenges that such archives and their staff are facing in today’s digital age: There are several million images already waiting to be systematically catalogued, and the demand for fast and precise access to visual sources is rising all the time. What just a few years ago sounded like science fiction is now reality and algorithms that analyse historical photographs, generate automatic metadata and create new educational formats in a matter of seconds are already being used. The future of archival work will nevertheless be defined not by automation and the refinement of its processes alone but by intelligent combinations of artificial intelligence (AI) and human expertise.

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