  {"id":133,"date":"2025-09-29T14:58:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/?page_id=133"},"modified":"2025-09-29T15:24:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T19:24:04","slug":"investigating-ai-for-transcribing-historical-documents-2025","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/investigating-ai-for-transcribing-historical-documents-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigating AI for Transcribing Historical Documents (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Michelle Kukan (History Major)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-139 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting-300x252.jpg\" alt=\"Digitized Transcript of Jane Addams Handwriting\" width=\"300\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting-300x252.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting-100x84.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting-152x128.jpg 152w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting-165x139.jpg 165w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting.jpg 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Michelle Kukan\u2019s research project, \u201cJane Addams Papers Project: Humanities and Artificial Intelligence\u201d tested out two generative AI tools to see whether they could assist students workers in transcribing documents. About one-third of the documents in the Jane Addams Digital Edition are handwritten, and some of the authors, including Jane Addams, are difficult-to-read. Michelle investigated two questions: 1) Would AI be efficient enough to replace student workers? 2) Would AI be accurate enough for students to use it as a tool to help them transcribe documents. Michelle worked with Transkribus, an trainable tool designed to read historical documents, and with ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-140 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Cathy Hajo and Michelle Kukan\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan-100x67.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan-152x102.jpg 152w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan-165x110.jpg 165w, https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-cathy-hajo-michelle-kukan.jpg 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>She uploaded and trained the Transkribus model using both typed and handwritten documents, had it transcribe the texts, and then corrected them, to further train the model. She found the training process time consuming and that due to our images (which were scanned from microfilm) and the poor handwriting, that the results were not as good as an average student transcriber. For typed and printed materials the results were far better. With ChatGPT4 no training was necessary and again, especially with typed materials it did a good job and was twice as fast as un-aided transcription, even when taking time to proofread the results. Michelle found that while AI transcription was not yet at the level needed for the project, it was a useful tool, especially for longer typed documents. Students could use the saved time focusing on the handwritten texts and conducting historical research. Her research was featured as part of Scholars Day at 69色情视频 in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Michelle Kukan (History Major) Michelle Kukan\u2019s research project, \u201cJane Addams Papers Project: Humanities and Artificial Intelligence\u201d tested out two generative AI tools to see whether they could assist students [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1011,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-133","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.5 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Investigating AI for Transcribing Historical Documents (2025) - Digital Humanities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michelle Kukan\u2019s research project, \u201cJane Addams Papers Project: Humanities and Artificial Intelligence\u201d tested out two generative AI tools to see whether they could assist students workers in transcribing documents.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/investigating-ai-for-transcribing-historical-documents-2025\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Investigating AI for Transcribing Historical Documents (2025)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michelle Kukan\u2019s research project, \u201cJane Addams Papers Project: Humanities and Artificial Intelligence\u201d tested out two generative AI tools to see whether they could assist students workers in transcribing documents.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/investigating-ai-for-transcribing-historical-documents-2025\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Digital Humanities\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-29T19:24:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2025\/09\/digital-humanities-digitized-transcript-Addams-Handwriting.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"512\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"430\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/investigating-ai-for-transcribing-historical-documents-2025\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ramapo.edu\/dh\/investigating-ai-for-transcribing-historical-documents-2025\/\",\"name\":\"Investigating AI for Transcribing Historical Documents (2025) - 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