Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 08/09/2026The Institutional Data Initiative continues our work to increase the computational accessibility of the ~1M volumes in Insitutional Books. Today’s releases add access to 22M photos and illustrations as well as 1.9B annotated paragraphs. Dig in. 030
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 02/09/2026Immensely proud of this collaboration with @bpl.boston.gov. A dataset of 1.47M newspaper pages and a new processing pipeline that breaks pages down to their component parts, increasing OCR accuracy and computational addressability. The historical record has never been more searchable. 032
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 13/08/2026AI enables new forms of research, but only where information is computationally accessible. Today, @institutional.org and @umich.edu Library are releasing a structured dataset that makes 186 years of U-M’s Board of Regents Proceedings newly accessible. institutional.org/posts/instit...institutional.orgInstitutional Proceedings: 186 years of university decisions. | IDIIDI and the University of Michigan Library have collaborated to release two centuries of the university’s governance decisions as a structured dataset that can be searched, analyzed, and reused. 111
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 07/12/2025AI is autotune (and Beat Detective) for culture writ large. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m...nytimes.comWhy Does A.I. Write Like … That? 110
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 20/11/2025When libraries join Google Books, Google not only scans their books, it also makes a wealth of image, OCR, & metadata available to them via the Google Return Interface (GRIN). But working with GRIN can be challenging, so we're releasing a tool to make it easier. www.institutional.org/posts/grin-t...institutional.orgAnnouncing the release of GRIN TransferGRIN Transfer, an open source tool that allows Google Books partner libraries to more easily access their Google Books collection. 153
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 24/07/2025Amanda Watson, @institutionaldatainitiative.org's Library Chair and leader of Harvard Law School Library, spoke about the importance of publishing library collections as data to guide the future of AI. hls.harvard.edu/today/food-f...hls.harvard.eduFood for (AI) thought and the library initiative improving AI’s digital diet - Harvard Law SchoolAmanda Watson of the Harvard Law School Library says the release of Harvard’s digitized collection is only the beginning of collaborations between libraries and tech firms. 020
Reposted by Greg LeppertBen Lee @bcgl.bsky.social · 02/07/2025With @yh-huang.bsky.social, I'm excited to share our Digital Collections Explorer, an open-source, multimodal viewer for digital collections! Users can search with both natural language inputs and reverse image search. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2507.00961 Public demo: digital-collections-explorer.comarxiv.orgDigital Collections Explorer: An Open-Source, Multimodal Viewer for Searching Digital CollectionsWe present Digital Collections Explorer, a web-based, open-source exploratory search platform that leverages CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) for enhanced visual discovery of digital col... 27426
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 20/06/2025This Monday, @institutionaldatainitiative.org will host Petr Knoth to share his experience leading CORE ("The world’s largest collection of open access research papers") as the rise of AI brings new meaning, and challenges, to stewarding knowledge repositories. Join us virtually via the link below. 222
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 16/06/2025Tomorrow, it's our pleasure to host @ayahbdeir.bsky.social to talk about the power of data in building an AI ecosystem that's open, transparent, and fair. 11am ET on June 17th. Register at the link below to attend virtually. 100
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 14/04/2025The @institutionaldatainitiative.org is proud to support The New Commons challenge. $100k grants along with mentorship. Let's get impactful data into the AI ecosystem. 065
Reposted by Greg LeppertFree Law Project ⚖ @free.law · 21/03/2025To start the weekend, we've got a brand new experience for case law on CourtListener. It has better typography, more features and metadata, five million scanned decisions from @harvardlil.bsky.social, and a lot more. Read all about it and let us know what you think: free.law/2025/03/21/c...free.lawA Faster, Smarter, Unified Case Law ExperienceA redesigned case law modernizes the reading experience with enhanced layout and typography, more advanced features, better speed, and more. 1278
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 12/03/2025As the @institutionaldatainitiative.org expands its mission, we’re announcing a collaboration with @bpl.boston.gov to develop AI-driven tools capable of accelerating new digitization at libraries across the world, starting at the Boston Public Library. institutionaldatainitiative.org/posts/using-...institutionaldatainitiative.orgUsing AI to Accelerate Digitization at Boston Public LibrarysToday, as part of our mission expansion, we’re announcing a collaboration with BPL to develop AI-driven tools capable of accelerating new digitization of large collections at libraries across the worl... 11710
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 05/03/2025I'm pleased to announce we're expanding our mission at the @institutionaldatainitiative.org with an open call for institutional collaborators, new digitization at Harvard Law School Library, and additional support to advance this work. institutionaldatainitiative.org/posts/open-c...institutionaldatainitiative.orgExpanding Our Mission: An Open Call for CollaboratorsToday, we’re pleased to announce an open call for institutional collaborators as new support expands the research capacity of the Institutional Data Initiative. 1119
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 12/02/2025Great op-ed from @shaynelongpre.bsky.social on the effects AI — as a technology and as a market — is having on the web. www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/11/1...technologyreview.comAI crawler wars threaten to make the web more closed for everyoneThere’s an accelerating cat-and-mouse game between web publishers and AI crawlers, and we all stand to lose. 031
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 29/01/2025In 15mins (1pm ET), I'll be giving a talk about @institutionaldatainitiative.org and our quest to build the most boring dataset in the world. Tune in here: lu.ma/iqkqvcuslu.maGreg Leppert, Harvard | The Most Boring Dataset in the World · LumaForesight Institute’s Intelligent Cooperation Group The Most Boring Dataset in the World Abstract: Data is a critical raw material in the construction of AI.… 040
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 21/12/2024@karaswisher.bsky.social and @ylecun.bsky.social discuss our @institutionaldatainitiative.org in the latest Pivot. It's essential that we establish equitable and sustainable models for data access and stewardship in the age of AI, and IDI is working on exactly that podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...podcasts.apple.comMeta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun Makes the Case for Open Source | On With Kara SwisherPodcast Episode · Pivot · 12/21/2024 · 55m 1102
Greg Leppert @leppert.me · 13/12/2024Yesterday we launched the Institutional Data Initiative at Harvard Law School Library to work with libraries, government agencies, and other knowledge institutions to help refine and publish their collections as data, with an eye toward AI. 🧵 bsky.app/profile/inst... 1134