iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Very excited to share that my @longreads.com essay, "Uncanny Testimony," received the 2026 American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Writing Award in the Technology category! Enormously grateful to the judges for selecting my essay! longreads.com/2025/09/25/a...

longreads.com

Uncanny Testimony - Longreads

As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

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University of Washington Information School @ischool.uw.edu · 23/04/2026

Our faculty are leading in the classroom, the lab and beyond – and we want to bolster support for this vital work. Make your gift today for #HuskyGivingDay to support faculty teaching, research and student mentorship: bit.ly/ischoolHGD26

Husky Giving Day: Faculty excellence, powered by you.
Purple gradient graphic quote image. “Teaching and research work together to help students understand AI and shape it in meaningful ways.” - Ben Lee, Information School Assistant Professor. University of Washington Information School.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I’m thrilled to have an essay in the latest print issue of the Bennington Review! It’s about my year working at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the convergence of collective and inherited memory. Enormously grateful that the editors selected it! bcgl.substack.com/p/new-essay-...

bcgl.substack.com

New essay in the Bennington Review

Greetings in 2026!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

We are grateful to the Mandel Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; UCLA's AI and Cultural Heritage Lab; and iSchool, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, Simpson Center for the Humanities, and CALMA at the University of Washington for co-sponsoring the workshop & symposium!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Contributions include: "Holocaust Memory and the Death of Web Search," "The Dangers of Holocaust Vibe," "Generative AI and Authenticity," "Post-Representation," "Responsible Stewardship," "AI in the Loop," "Sorting AI Out: Refusals & Futures," and "Forgetting"

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Last May, @toddpresner.bsky.social, Robert Ehrenreich, and I convened a symposium at @ischool.uw.edu to explore "AI and the Future of Holocaust Research & Memory." Our resulting white paper is now officially online and contains provocations, reflections, and refusals: doi.org/10.6069/cx72...

doi.org

AI and The Future of Holocaust Research & Memory

How will the advent of AI impact the future of Holocaust studies? Will it provide new methods for analyzing data and displaying information for research and education that will benefit the field, or w...

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

@rjainrjain.bsky.social's Gates Cambridge Scholarship is such exciting news and so well-deserved! Can't wait to hear what the year at Cambridge brings! grad.uw.edu/rijul-jain/

grad.uw.edu

Rijul Jain

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University of Washington Information School @ischool.uw.edu · 06/03/2026

Our new class aims to help students across the University of Washington gain a broader, better understanding of AI. Assistant Professor Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social has been teaching Informatics 110 as part of an effort to build robust AI literacy for all students. ischool.uw.edu/news/2026/02...

ischool.uw.edu

Informatics class helps UW students get a handle on AI

Students today are being asked to engage with artificial intelligence in all aspects of their lives — in their personal lives, education and careers. But...

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Josh Hadro @hadro.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Calling all technologists, artists and other creative visionaries: The Library of Congress has opened the call for the next Innovator in Residence! Apply by 2pm ET April 10 newsroom.loc.gov/news/library...

Library of Congress Innovator in Residence graphic

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Coalition for Networked Information @cni-org.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

The plenary videos from the CNI meeting are now available: 🤝Shaping CNI’s Future Together 📚A Landscape of AI in Libraries @bcgl.bsky.social 🏆AUPresses Stand UP Award @brettbobley.bsky.social @aupresses.bsky.social 💰The State of Funding for US Higher Ed, Science, and Technology in a Time of Change

youtube.com

CNI Fall 2025 Membership Meeting - YouTube

CNI Fall 2025 Membership Meeting videos at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill Washington, DC. Learn more at: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2025

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Molly Hardy @mollyhardy.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Publication day! My article on how to read an 18C newspapers, on digital remediation, and on the unfree press out in the world. Thanks @andy-schocket.bsky.social @historymatterssyd.bsky.social & M. Karrs for making it all possible. @universitypress.cambridge.org lnkd.in/eEwbdbSw

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THiCC PI @profdancy.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Figured I’d wait to post anything for this, but I can’t tell you how excited I am for us to have the opportunity to be funded to do this work. We really do believe that our project connecting communities, digital archives of the early Black press, and human-AI systems will have a large impact

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

I really appreciate your kind words!

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Brett Bobley @brettbobley.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

For "Communities in the Loop: AI for Cultures & Contexts in Multimodal Archives," congrats to: Jim Casey, Christopher Dancy, @snblickhan.bsky.social, Tiffany Smith, Benjamin Lee. (And I must also include @profgabrielle.bsky.social !)

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Seconding all of this — so much fun not work with so many people I deeply admire, and we can’t wait to share out as our project progresses!

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sam blickhan @snblickhan.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

I can confirm, thinking with this crew is honestly wonderful, 10/10, Dream Team experience. I have more to say but a meeting to facilitate! More soon.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Honored to be giving an opening plenary talk on AI & libraries later today at CNI 2025! I’m excited for the conversation with Kate Zwaard and for the full program by @cni-org.bsky.social! www.cni.org/events/membe...

cni.org

Schedule

CNI Fall 2025 Membership Meeting December 11-12, 2025 Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill Hotel, Washington, DC PDF Schedule View the CNI Fall 2025 Membership Meeting schedule & directory.…

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Jim Casey @jimccasey1.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

I am beyond thrilled to share some good news: 1. I've moved to a new job at UC Santa Barbara. 2. We have been selected for a 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute award from @schmidtsciences.bsky.social! Both, we hope, will allow us to continue building the work! + hfa.ucsb.edu/news/schmidt...

hfa.ucsb.edu

Schmidt Sciences awards $750,000 to UCSB-led team to transform Black press archives with AI | Division of Humanities and Fine Arts

English professor Jim Casey leads a national coalition to recover 19th-century African American newspapers using machine learning and public crowdsourcing.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Thank you to @datarescueproject.org for publishing this blog post by @kdeeds.bsky.social and myself on GovScape! Extremely grateful to @datarescueproject.org for all their incredible work!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Very excited to have a software paper with @yh-huang.bsky.social in the CHR journal on the Digital Collections Explorer, our open-source multimodal viewer for digital collections!

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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

New Research Tool: GovScape (US Gov PDFs) govscape.net ||| Research Paper (preprint) About #GovScape arxiv.org/abs/2511.11010 #govdocs @eotarchive.org

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Tyler McBrien @tylermcbrien.com · 19/11/2025

Anyone interested in govt transparency and public access should check out GovScape from @bcgl.bsky.social and his team👇 It's an incredibly powerful tool that allows visual, semantic text, and keywords search of 10 million U.S. government PDFs (70 million pages!) and counting: www.govscape.net

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Thanks so much! Truly appreciate it!

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govscape.net @govscape.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

We’re live! Search 10 million+ U.S. government PDFs (70 million pages)! GovScape offers visual search, semantic text search, and keyword search. Explore below: Website: govscape.net ArXiv link: arxiv.org/abs/2511.11010

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Trevor Owens @tjowens.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Huge step forward in enabling access and use of content archived from government websites!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

7/ Lastly, we’d love to hear your feedback on GovScape at bcgl@uw.edu! For more updates on GovScape, follow: @govscape.bsky.social

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

7/ A particular thank-you to @kdeeds.bsky.social for leading this project with me and for making this possible! And to @yh-huang.bsky.social, who did an incredible job with the front-end and dev-ops!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

6/ GovScape is the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration, co-led by myself and @kdeeds.bsky.social. We’re enormously grateful to the team: Ying-Hsiang Huang, Claire Gong, Shreya Shaji, Alison Yan, Leslie Harka, @tjowens.bsky.social, @vphill.bsky.social, @shannonshen.bsky.social, and SJ Klein!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

5/ Interested in learning more? Visit GovScape at: www.govscape.net – try some searches and read the FAQ! You can also watch a demo video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNda...

youtube.com

GovScape: A Tutorial Video

YouTube video by GovScape

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

4/ What does visual search do? Here’s a visual search for “redacted documents”

A visual search for "redacted documents" showing a number of documents with heavy redactions.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

3/ The full GovScape architecture is detailed in this figure, showing how the client interacts with the server, DBs, and indices. We utilize FAISS for text embeddings and for CLIP embeddings, and SQLite FTS5 for keyword indexing.

A diagram showing the GovScape architecture, including the client, server, and databases.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

2/ The pre-processing pipeline ingests PDFs, renders them, generates CLIP and BGE embeddings of individual pages, and indexes the text. The total compute cost for GovScape's pre-processing pipeline for 10 million PDFs was approximately $1,500. Our code is available at: github.com/bcglee/govsc....

An diagram showing the GovScape PDF pre-processing pipeline, including PDF identification, rendering, and semantification (including embedding generation).

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

2/ GovScape is built on top of the End of Term Web Archive (eotarchive.org) and currently contains all renderable PDFs (50 pages or fewer) from the 2020 crawl, documenting the first Trump administration. An overview of GovScape’s search functionality can be found in this diagram.

A diagram showing the three central query methods within GovScape: semantic text search, visual search, and keyword search.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

1/ Announcing GovScape – a public search system for 10 million U.S. government PDFs (70 million pages)! GovScape offers visual search, semantic text search, and keyword search. Explore below: Website: www.govscape.net ArXiv link: arxiv.org/abs/2511.11010

govscape.net

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University of Washington Information School @ischool.uw.edu · 16/10/2025

Assistant Professor Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social's essay on the topic of AI and Holocaust Memory, “Uncanny Testimony,” was published by @longreads.com: longreads.com/2025/09/25/a...

longreads.com

Uncanny Testimony - Longreads

As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Thanks so much, I appreciate it!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Thanks so much for your kind words - I really appreciate them, and I'm glad that the piece resonated with you! And thank you for your work, too, in having volunteered as a docent and being the family archivist!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Thanks so much, Scott - very kind of you to say!

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Longreads @longreads.com · 26/09/2025

“For all its futuristic appeal, I felt myself turning to the past. I yearned to speak with my grandmother about her life.” A scholar at the intersection of AI and Holocaust memory wrestles with technology that speaks with the dead. By @bcgl.bsky.social: longreads.com/2025/09/25/a...

longreads.com

Uncanny Testimony - Longreads

As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

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Jennifer Serventi @jenserventi.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Appreciated this thoughtful piece from @bcgl.bsky.social. Eloquently puts into words some of concerns about a particular use of AI that I've been grappling with.

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Thanks so much, @jenserventi.bsky.social - I truly appreciate it!

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Longreads @longreads.com · 25/09/2025

“But what if, instead of resisting the deaths of the last survivors, we allow ourselves to accept their mortality?” The grandson of an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor grapples with the use of AI to reanimate the dead. A new essay on @longreads.com, by @bcgl.bsky.social: longreads.com/2025/09/25/a...

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

I’m incredibly grateful to @cherilucasrowlands.com for working with me on this piece and providing such thoughtful edits throughout the writing process!

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

My lab is running a study to investigate how serendipity relates to information seeking in digital collections. We're looking for researchers & practitioners who have used, designed, or stewarded digital collections to participate in our survey (<10 min): forms.gle/zGJDZZ14vx2M...

forms.gle

Survey on Serendipity and Information Seeking in Digital Collections

Purpose of the Study We are seeking to understand the different methods of information seeking in digital collections. In addition, we would like to understand what the participants' perceptions of se...

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Ben Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Thanks so much! Yes, we're planning to publish on the survey - we're hoping it'll be useful to the community!

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