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Gavin Beinart-Smollan

@beismo.bsky.social
2.1K followers 5.8K following 50 posts

Public and digital historian. PhD candidate at NYU. Writing about Yiddish family letters and the Lithuanian Jewish diaspora. Very amateur genealogist.

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Reposted by Gavin Beinart-Smollan
Cameron Blevins @cblevins.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
📣 New historical data visualization! "How Fast Was the Mail?" is an interactive map showing how long information took to travel across the US between 1882-1908: cblevins.github.io/mail-time/ +
cblevins.github.io
How Fast Was the Mail?
Explore mail transit times via railway between major U.S. cities, 1882–1908.
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Thiago Krause @thiagokrause.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Looking forward to @ek27.bsky.social lecture at Wayne State next Monday, February 9, 2 pm, F/AB, 3339, on "Partnering with AI to transform Archival Sources into Research Data"! Here's the Zoom link for those not in Detroit: wayne-edu.zoom.us/j/9644839669...
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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 23/01/2026
I know I don't have a ton of media followers, but I'll put this out there anyway: if you need someone to comment/offer context on the removal of the slavery exhibit at the President's House site in Philly, get in touch. I just finished an entire book on Americans' fight over Washington and slavery.
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Bill @bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Even though I absolutely hate reading AI writing, I am getting negatively polarized by the stunning incuriosity of so much of the professoriate about the objectively strangest technology in the last hundred years
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RNS @rns.org · 30/12/2025
Scholars affiliated with the Midrash Project embarked on a “transcribe-a-thon,” using eScriptorium, an AI platform tailored for use on historical manuscripts. religionnews.com/2025/12/17/a...
religionnews.com
AI is enlisted to rescue Jews' cultural heritage and give new life to ancient languages
(RNS) — Researchers are using a very modern tool to transcribe and read hundreds of thousands of medieval manuscripts from the lost age of Eastern European Jewry.
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Elise Wang @elisewang.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
And the thing I’m most proud of doesn’t have a link to share yet, but it’s almost done! I’ve been leading a time of computer scientists and medievalists to create an HCR for Medieval Latin legal records, like those digitized at AALT (example below).
A screenshot of the model which includes the manuscript on the right and the extracted text on the left.
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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
Since they have all deleted their original posts, I want to make clear that this was said in response to some AI enthusiasts arguing that existing AI could do the job of a historian in part because all existing information you would need to do history research was already on the Internet.
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Australian Migration History Network @amigrationhn.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
🚨 new article by Ruth Balint academic.oup.com/past/advance...
academic.oup.com
The Jewish Refugee Family and Concerns Over Intermarriage in Australia After 1945∗
Abstract. Intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews was conceptualized as a ‘problem’ by the Australian Jewish establishment after the Second World War. From
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Heather Froehlich @heatherfro.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
i feel really conflicted about the people who insist that the Humanities needs to be a 100% technology free space. I get you - I am very analog in my daily life, with my piles of paper and pens - but AI is also doing a lot of things you actually like and enjoy having. R's thread is right on
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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
The collateral damage of people upset (often with good reasons) about generative AI is their digital humanities colleagues. It’s outpacing 2010 levels of vitriol, by a lot. The irony is we’re the best allies — we understand how the tech works and can translate between the doom and the hype. +
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Tom Scheinfeldt @foundhistory.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Gemini’s ability to read handwritten archival documents has importance beyond the humanities. It opens new frontiers for scientific research and collaboration with the humanities. foundhistory.org/seeing-old-s... #ClimateScience #DataScience #Agriculture #Archives #Research #LandGrant #AI
foundhistory.org
Seeing Old Science
Gemini’s ability to read handwritten archival documents has importance beyond the humanities
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MarineLives @marinelives.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
(1) Announcing the AI + History Collaboratory monthly online programme, December 2025 to June 2026. We still have spaces.https://github.com/Addaci/ai-and-history-collaboratory/blob/main/README.md #history #ai #researchmethods
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 04/11/2025
Wrote a short piece arguing that higher ed must help steer AI. TLDR: If we outsource this to tech, we outsource our whole business. But rejectionism is basically stalling. If we want to survive, schools themselves must proactively shape AI for education & research. [1/6, unpaywalled at 5/6] +
chronicle.com
Opinion | AI Is the Future. Higher Ed Should Shape It.
If we want to stay at the forefront of knowledge production, we must fit technology to our needs.
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James Elder @jameselder.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
I do take all of Dr Jackson's points but, as an archivist, handwritten text recognition is still an extremely exciting development. It will allow us to improve our knowledge of our collections and to make them available in ways that can make them more accessible, more useful to more researchers.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Very interesting. It would probably be more accurate to say that lower resource languages are a problem regardless of Latin or non Latin script.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
And even more so for non Latin scripts.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Low resource languages are still a big problem for handwriting recognition. I work on Yiddish—all of the generative models currently return gibberish or pure hallucination when given a handwritten Yiddish letter. It’s a very interesting and exciting problem and one I think we can solve.
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information labs @informationlabs.org · 04/11/2025
We’re thrilled to launch our new Humans of AI podcast! Prof. @melissaterras.bsky.social of @transkribus.bsky.social — a cooperative AI platform transforming how libraries, archives, and museums bring history to life. 🎧 share.transistor.fm/s/ce0399b5 📺 youtu.be/qK5x4j7jiuQ #AI #CulturalHeritage
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
This is incredibly cool. read.dukeupress.edu/american-lit...
read.dukeupress.edu
Literary Forensics as Method: Chemical Analysis, Food Stains, and Readerly Encounters with Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks
Abstract. Much of the study of cookbooks relies on guesswork and reading between the lines that are written down—the type of guesswork that requires cookbooks be read alongside other types of texts ra...
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
…And it turns out that a huge amount of what we seek from a human person can be simulated through this Frankensteinian reanimation of our collective dead letters. What a discovery!” www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
newyorker.com
Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?
Maybe not as we’ve known them. But, in the ruins of the old curriculum, something vital is stirring.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
This sums up a lot for me: “Historians have long extolled the “power of the archive.” Little did we know that the engineers would come along and plug it in...
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 20/08/2025
This is btw the trajectory you would expect if you believe LLMs are—not an abstract protean principle called “intelligence”—but a cultural technology that animates the verbal machinery already folded up in libraries, allowing it to run by itself.
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Here’s my bottom line on the firehose of AI higher ed discourse: for the vast majority for us it’s over. “It” here is not “college” or “teaching”’per se; rather, “it” is the transactional underpinning of those endeavors. Let me explain: 🧵
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Thank you, that’s very kind! I don’t have anything serious at the moment, mostly just playing around, but I will definitely let you know.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
I guess I’ll have to try that, thank you! It’s always an effort vs results calculation of course. No GPU currently.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
(I tried to put through a 340-page pdf of archive photos which I guess was a mistake). Is there an easy workaround for this?
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
I'm trying it out and so far it's great on crappy iPhone archive photos. But I'm getting a lot of "Expired ZeroGPU proxy token" error messages, and the model card does say "Despite its 1.7B parameter LLM foundation, dots.ocr is not yet optimized for high-throughput processing of large PDF volumes"
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Interactive timeline: 150 years across 30+ predecessor orgs, with links to archival collections for further research: 150yearsofcare.org/150-years-of...
The United Hebrew Charities building, 1906
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Oral histories: Video interviews with veteran staff, trustees and clients, exploring 40 years of change - AIDs epidemic, social justice movements, residential care, Medicaid evolution 150yearsofcare.org/voices-people/
Screenshot of video interview with Pierre Thomas, former Executive Program Director at The Jewish Board
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Mental health pioneers: profiles of mid 20th-century leaders and their clinical contributions with rich multimedia archives 150yearsofcare.org/architects/
Headshot of Madeleine Borg, social reformer and philanthropist who advocated for the decriminalization of juvenile mental health treatment and founded the Jewish Big Sisters movement
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Case file deep dive: The remarkable story of Morris and Lena Adler through their National Desertion Bureau file 150yearsofcare.org/deserted-fam...
Illustration of Lena Adler and children, with pages from their National Desertion Bureau case file in the background
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
National Desertion Bureau Database: 19,696 case cards from 1911-1935, tracking down men who had abandoned their wives and children 150yearsofcare.org/ndb-database/
Card from National Desertion Bureau card catalog. Credit: YIVO Archives
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Interactive charity map: 1599 charity recipients and donors in 1870s New York City, revealing attitudes about “worthy” and “unworthy” poor in the 19th century 150yearsofcare.org/worthy-and-u... (Special thanks to @simonwillison.net - @datasette.io was crucial in creating the underlying data)
Screenshot of interactive map of United Hebrew Charities recipients and donors, c. 1870s
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Excited to launch 150yearsofcare.org, a digital exhibition exploring the fascinating history of The Jewish Board, one of New York’s oldest and largest social service agencies. I want to highlight some great resources for teachers and scholars:
Students at the Hawthorne-Cedar Knolls school, c. 1980s
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 18/06/2025
If you use a model dialogically, it’s effectively guiding you through the free-writing/revision cycle composition teachers recommend. I get why this mode of use isn’t very visible. All the rhetoric around AI has been that it’s “generative” and does the work for you. Things like the “Dear Sydney” +
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Beatrice Alex @beatricealex.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Hidden Heritages - a great resource providing access to digitised Gaelic and Irish folktales. The transcription was done automatically using @transkribus.bsky.social or crowdsourcing. A great example of the use of AI and NLP for the benefits of research and society.
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Cato Minor @catominor.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Interested in hearing about a new alternative to Transkribus and eScriptorium? This Wednesday, from 15:00 to 16:30, there will be a virtual presentation of Calfa Vision by Baptiste Queuche, organized by IMAFO, Austrian Academy of Sciences.See the details: www.oeaw.ac.at/imafo/verans... #htr #atr #dh
oeaw.ac.at
Text recognition for non-western languages in manuscripts: presentation of Calfa
Online Lecture on DIGITAL HUMANITIES at IMAFO-HI | by Baptiste Queuche
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
This is truly a pathbreaking book: a book that answers crucial questions that have gone unanswered for a really long time. Highly recommend, and really looking forward to this talk.
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
I visited the Alan Turing Institute and the New Real in London last week for a workshop on "Doing AI Differently." So many interesting talks, and I spoke about my ongoing poetry work with @mellymeldubs.bsky.social, Anna Preus, and Sriharsh Bhyravajjula, which you can view at 2:19 in this recording.
vimeo.com
Doing AI Differently: London Workshop
An International Initiative Integrating Humanities into the Core of AI Development. Doing AI Differently is led by The Alan Turing Institute, University of Edinburgh…
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Snowy spends all day like this. What a life.
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
For a sec I was like why is someone else posting pictures of my dog?! 😂
White dog lying upside down on the sofa
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Dr Alys D Beverton @alysbeverton.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Interesting thread on public history, Reddit, and gaming…Didn’t think I’d be putting together those three in a sentence today
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
“Physical research and critical thinking about the nature of archives and qualitative data just got way more important.” 💯
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Kate Carpenter @katecarp.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
I beg of you, nonfiction writers, breathe life into your prose! Ignore the professor in your brain that's always ready to mark something as too colloquial. Make it read like something written by an actual human you might want to talk to at a party!
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Meredith Martin @mmvty.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
arxiv.org/abs/2502.19190 we're still tinkering, but couldn't wait to share.
arxiv.org
Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research
This paper presents a set of provocations for considering the uses, impact, and harms of generative AI from the perspective of humanities researchers. We provide a working definition of humanities res...
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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 20/02/2025
A reasonably effective workaround for this problem is for educators to create lessons and lesson plans for people to use as system prompts for the models Info in prompts almost always overrides info baked into the model weights, unless the model itself has been actively trained for misinformation
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Gavin Beinart-Smollan @beismo.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Someone needs to make a sitcom where the setting is a late stage landsmanshaft.
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Tim Lubin @timlubin.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Given the vast volume of unedited manuscripts and the small pool of scholars to transcribe, collate, and edit them, AI models capable of doing a decent job of some of that work--at scale--could be really beneficial. Human eyes and brain are still needed, but more ground can be covered. #philology
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