iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"A triumph of ancient Mediterranean archaeology & of comparative history."—Josephine Quinn, author of How the World Made the West Slaving States by Elizabeth Fentress & Adam Rabinowitz is out now (20 Oct UK pub). Explore a free preview: buff.ly/MmGkTnn #AncientHistory #History #Archaeology

Slaving States: From West Africa to the Ancient Mediterranean by Elizabeth Fentress and Adam Rabinowitz. A pathbreaking new perspective on the ways ancient societies were shaped and transformed by slave trading.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I'm trying to test out a Chinese LLM for potential bias. Using a chat interface, I have detected at least some, however my goal is to use this for HTR. What are some handwritten primary sources that a CCP-friendly LLM might refuse to transcribe or would edit to be pro-CCP?

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Do I get bragging rights from being shushed by the Chief Information Officer of the Library of Congress? Because that happened last week.

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Dr. Emily Friedman @ecfriedman.com · 10/09/2026

Intro to Secretary Hand today. Our room full of 18th century scholars collectively saying “thank God they stopped doing this in our period”

Letterforms from secretary hand. Only some of them are recognizable.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I just watched a webinar I recorded after binge-listening to @bretdevereaux.bsky.social interviews, and am embarrassed by how much of his oral style I copied. Reminds me of the time my college friend told me he could tell I'd been reading Miss Manners anthologies again by how I talked.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Recording of my webinar on how I use (or avoid) AI to edit historic account books. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtZZ...

youtube.com

Editing Historic Account Books: When and Whether to Use AI

YouTube video by fromthepage

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I noticed something interesting in the #HTR that #Gemini produced from this #Hebrew letter today: עֵת נִפְרְדָה פְּרַאנְסִיס מֵאֲהָבֶיהָ הוּסַר מִבֵּית כֹּהֵן כְּלִיל תִּפְאֶרֶת עָלֶיהָ בָּכוּ עֲנִיֵּי עַם יַעַן נֶעֱדֶרֶת זוֹרַעַת חֶסֶד בִּתְבוּנוֹת כַּפֶּיהָ

Hebrew text in careful, outlined script.

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Nelson Rare Books @nelsonrarebooks.com · 26/08/2026

Do they eat feral hogs in Texas?

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I'm getting really excited about tomorrow's webinar. Not because I think it'll be our best--editing historic account books is pretty niche, and the presenter (me) is way out of his depth--but because it's on my own historical research. content.fromthepage.com/aug-2026-web...

content.fromthepage.com

Editing Historic Account Books: When and Whether to Use AI (August 20, 2026) - FromThePage Blog

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sam blickhan @snblickhan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

my god, we’ve been going about this all wrong 🙄

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I'm getting very tired of LLM-based spam. No, I don't think that you've "booked 100 calls" with companies buying manuscript transcription in the last month, Caleb.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Join me this Thursday to walk through my process transcribing 19th-century account books in a quest to memorialize people buried in a Virginia slave cemetery. Editing Historic Account Books: When and Whether to Use AI (August 20, 2026) content.fromthepage.com/aug-2026-web...

Two facing pages listing the debit and credit entries for the account of Daniel & William King with Jeremiah White Graves

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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Oh god. I've just heard. The poor man. And in the final reckoning, all of us who participated in the furore on social media — even out of the best of motives and with care — were ultimately part of the mob. I am sorry. I am so sorry to his family and loved ones. The poor man.

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California State Library @castatelibrary.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Dust off your cursive skills by transcribing handwritten letters from authors like influential journalist Ambrose Bierce or native Californian Gertrude Atherton. Head over to From the Page and check out our collections recently uploaded to fromthepage.com/castatelibra...

letter written in cursive by Ambrose Bierce

postcard with a waterfall and trees and the written message part on the right.

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Jordan S. Carroll 🌹 @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Early modern recipe books are like

Entries such as “For sore eyes, the evil, to preserve eyes, elder wine”

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

100 years puts me at my great-grandparents generation, but I know what they were doing: Tobacco farmer Tobacco farmer Tobacco farmer Tobacco farmer My grandparents would have been approximately 10 years old, but they would have been pulling leaves or tying hands with the adults, depending on gender.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I've been worrying about cognitive atrophy and moral disengagement from #AI use for a while, but it really bit me today. My dev machine is in the shop, and so Sara and I were using her laptop to run some Claude Code sessions. One session was for a one-off script to run analytics and report in CSV

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Caroline (Carrie) T. Schroeder @ctschroeder.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Hey fellow DOGED-friends: did you get the message from the NEH that they're setting up a process for reinstatement? This seems like significant progress. Thanks to the staff at NEH who are doing the work behind the scenes to address the mistakes others imposed on their agency

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

How efficient is AI at transcribing a deluxe medieval manuscript? That's the wrong question! Some thoughts from a conversation with medievalist @lauramorreale.bsky.social and a letter from the pope. app.bentonow.com/share/bX0mnj...

Richly decorated medieval manuscript on which is written law codes in Old French, beginning "Oiant le dit del un & de lautre: la court deit dire au clamant & au defendant..."

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

The difficult part of any technological infrastructure that has been incorporated into an institution is that generally the institution has hollowed out whatever services and roles that technological was brought in to modify or replace, so uncoupling is an expensive and messy prospect.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

In just under two hours, we're hosting @jonippolito.net in a webinar presenting his research on the environmental impact of #AI use compared with other common digital technologies. Register for "How Green is your Prompt" webinar here: content.fromthepage.com/april-2026-w...

content.fromthepage.com

How Green Is Your Prompt? (April 2, 2026) - FromThePage Blog

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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Final thought on Paul Ehrlich: I happened to see him speak twice, once at HS graduation in ’90s and once at conference sponsored by Fortune (!?) in ’00s. Both times he offered same, disproven “population bomb” warnings he’d made for decades. As joke goes, he predicted ten of the next zero famines.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

I stumbled across something interesting during a live demo in yesterday's webinar. Not having anything prepared, I tried a page in the Queens University Archives' Riel Resistance Collection. The hand was extraordinarily difficult for me, even though it was late 19th-century North American script

English-language text written in 19th-century script by one hand, using black ink for the first line (which contains a name, number, and dollar amount) with red ink for the remaining four and a half lines, apparently containing a terse narrative.

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Digital Newberry @digitalnewberry.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

📌 Where to find us: 🔍 Browse our digital collections -- thousands of rare maps, manuscripts, postcards, and more, all free and online collections.newberry.org ✍️ Help us transcribe historical documents on Newberry Transcribe (no experience needed, just curiosity) nt.newberry.org

Screenshot of the Newberry Library Digital Collections homepage featuring a pastel illustration of a polar bear on ice with mountains and a sun; a banner invites browsing the digital collections, with “Browse all” and “Recently added” thumbnails below.

Screenshot of the Newberry Transcribe homepage with a purple handwriting background; a large panel reads “Newberry Transcribe — Unlock history!” with buttons for “Learn more” and “Browse manuscripts,” and a row of project tiles below.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

We're 75 minutes away from our webinar on responsible AI use in FromThePage--the challenges we face from AI and how we're addressing (some of) them: content.fromthepage.com/feb-2026-web...

content.fromthepage.com

Responsible AI in FromThePage (February 12, 2026) - FromThePage Blog

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mia ridge @miaout.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Quick blog post noting some thoughts on 'Documenting AI-created/enhanced records in catalogues/metadata/displays' - I'd love to know who's already doing it, and how? www.openobjects.org.uk/2026/02/docu... #AI4LAM #MuseTech

openobjects.org.uk

Documenting AI-created/enhanced records in catalogues/metadata/displays? – Open Objects

Open Objects

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Laura Morreale @lauramorreale.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

I am very excited to report that a project I have been working on for 3+ years is finally seeing the light of day! Along with @byzcapp.bsky.social and Jesse Torgerson, we debut a new annual section in Digital Philology that proposes the dataset as a new genre of publication. odfms.hcommons.org

odfms.hcommons.org

Open Datasets For Medieval Studies – ODFMS is a showcase of world-class research on the Middle Ages in dataset format.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

This is the first time we've been willing to add LLM-supported transcription to FromThePage. Last week's webinar: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqR...

youtube.com

Introducing Gemini 3.0 Support in FromThePage

YouTube video by fromthepage

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Katharina Ost @katharinaost.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

I'm not ready to discard the entire ecosystem we've built around making data openly available to possibly, hopefully slightly impair commercial AI training. Users uploading data (they often don't have the right to relicense for AI training) into AI models is a drop in the ocean.

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Margaret Schotte @schottemargaret.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

My worry here is that tabular, numerical info is much easier to decipher and standardize, so it gets turned into a dataset without…

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

"From a transcribers point of view I will be very unlikely now to continue devoting time to working on straightforward handwritten documents without an AI draft as a starting point ." She plans to attend our webinar this Thursday and might be willing to talk about her experience.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

An update: after a week of testing, the same volunteer is now very happy: "I have been very pleased to use the AI facility in transcribing Nicholas Piper Log books for Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society." ...

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

It looks like we passed another milestone on FromThePage last week:

Screenshot showing "3,008,092 Transcribed Pages"

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Josh Hadro @hadro.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

But it really feels like libraries & archives as a field suddenly just went from "we aren't generally attempting to do automated handwriting recognition because it's at the edge of what's possible" to "oh boy now we have another doable but labor-intensive collections enhancement task on the backlog"

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Lisa Smith @historybeagle.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

People who like to transcribe tend to be hands-on types, or puzzle solvers, or people who read between the lines. Transcribing is a way of thinking. It is not for every project, but for some projects, it can be crucial.

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Lisa Smith @historybeagle.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

As someone with FtP projects, I think there are still several good reasons for people to choose transcribing. The goal is not necessarily to record the words, but to find meaning. Sometimes that comes from reading the words, other times it comes from closely reading each mark.+

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Laura Morreale @lauramorreale.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

I have never felt that AI is a threat to transcription projects. Transcription is such a fulfilling experience and the words run through you in ways that reading alone can never do. Meeting up with scribes of the past will always be thrilling.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Yesterday, Google released Gemini 3, which has gotten really interesting reviews from Mark Humphries: generativehistory.substack.com/p/the-sugar-... Also yesterday, we shipped an integration between FromThePage and Gemini, allowing transcribers the option of starting with an AI draft.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Should a volunteer use #AI to help them transcribe pages for a #crowdsourcing project? That question got me thinking about why, exactly, my answer is "no" and what kinds of purposes different transcriptions may be used for. content.fromthepage.com/can-voluntee...

content.fromthepage.com

Is That Transcription Really Human? - FromThePage Blog

Last month, someone asked this question on the Genealogy and AI Facebook group:If volunteers use AI to transcribe documents, is that OK? I have strong opinions, but want to explain them. First off, th...

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

We did a serious analysis of our experiments adding AI coding agents (Codex, Github Copilot Agent) to our development process at FromThePage for a group of friends in software yesterday, which I thought I'd share here as well. After a couple of months of experiments, the results are very mixed.

AI Dev Experiments

July 11: Assign new customer issue to Copilot agent – Success
July 20-26: Use Copilot agent to improve algorithm in side project – Spectacular Success
July 26: Use DeepResearch to identify duplicate issues in backlog – Failure
July 27/28: Processing Backlog with Copilot – Mixed Results
August 7-13: Multiple AIs researching production upgrade issue – Spectacular Failure

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

A little feature we shipped yesterday in FromThePage: you can now reference a work by page ranges, so fromthepage.com/unclibraries... shows a single two-page letter from the fifty-page folder uploaded as a single work!

fromthepage.com

folder 1251: Correspondence, 1865 (Cameron Family Papers - Records of Enslavement) | FromThePage

folder 1251: Correspondence, 1865 (Cameron Family Papers - Records of Enslavement) - read Work.

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Martin R. Kalfatovic @udcmrk.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

What's the Character Error Rate of a Volunteer? Analyzing accuracy in cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects | @benwbrum.bsky.social | #DH2025

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Sitting in coffeeshop listening to three strangers at the bar getting into a detailed conversation about the different accents of Louisiana in both English and French. It's a good start to the day.

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Association for Documentary Editing @editorial-notes.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Come hear Dreanna Belden share about "One Great Document: a Woman’s Perspective on the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1824 Visit to Yorktown and Norfolk," during our lightning talks at next week's ADE Annual Meeting.

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Does Oxford University Press no longer publicize conference discounts or holiday sales?

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Ben Brumfield @benwbrum.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

I'm really enjoying the inaugural Alliance for Texas History conference at Texas State University. Best session I've attended so far? It's a toss-up between one on a freedman blacksmith and another on highway construction through African-American neighborhoods in Houston roadstaken.org #ATxH

roadstaken.org

Roadstaken

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