Workshop “AI-enhanced charter retrieval” @ ICARus Convention #33

We held a workshop titled “AI-enhanced charter retrieval” on the 17th October 2024 at the ICARus Convention #33 in the Reggia di Portici near Naples, Italy.

It consisted of two parts. The first was dedicated to introducing the purpose and essence of Monasterium.net (Mom), its reception in and contributions from Italy with a testimonial talk by Maria Rosaria Falcone (ICARus Italia, DSWLab), as well as the work of a representative core user group, with a presentation by Martin Roland (Austrian Academy of Sciences) on the flag-ship collection ‘illuminated charters’.

The purpose of the second and larger part was demonstrating and giving the audience the opportunity to observe, steer, and test some of the technical AI implementations. Therein, we showcased a live bleeding-edge version of Mom Next Generation (NG) with its AI-enhanced search features, including various kinds of similarity search based on one or more documents. In addition, we presented two proofs of concepts on visual detection and search methods, i.e., on recovering seals and texture analysis, with a focus on AI explainability.

The event in the Biblioteca di Area Agraria attracted a sizable number of people. It allowed us to send an update to the community about the progress of our project’s work, and a clear signal on that their wishes for and requirements on Mom NG are seen, heard, and taken up!