Paper short abstract:

In this case study we demonstrate how we are using innovative digital technologies - namely AI-based handwritten text recognition, coupled with community participation via the web - to provide enhanced access to university-based Scottish and Irish folklore archives.

Paper long abstract:

The School of Scottish Studies Archives (University of Edinburgh), and the Irish National Folklore Collection (University College Dublin), together comprise a vast collection of Scottish and Irish traditional narrative. As part of the Decoding Hidden Heritages project, which seeks to create, analyse and disseminate a large Scottish-Irish textual corpus of folktales from within these archives, access to the oral narrative-based riches contained within the archives will be greatly improved for both researchers and members of the public by virtue of enhanced full-text search. AI-based handwritten text recognition (HTR) technology coupled with community participation, whereby community volunteers work to enhance the HTR AI models, is being deployed to achieve this outcome.

This enhanced digital corpus can be utilised by the living communities, from whom these tales were first collected. As part of wider efforts for linguistic and cultural renewal, such resources can elucidate collective understanding of local aesthetics through socially driven re-collection, reconnecting the archives with the active transmission of intergenerational knowledge systems. Beyond simply being a means for understanding the past (and the text serving as additional training data), this digital resource will unveil pathways in and out of the archives for the creative potential of storytelling as collective wealth, from the streaming lines of a formulaic run to the accrued performance and resulting organic variation of given narrative between performances and performers. Ultimately, community members, researchers and learners alike can actively participate and transform these artforms, providing opportunities for resilient and rooted expressions of identity in the contemporary world.