📚 AI deciphers handwriting and makes 350,000 hidden books searchable – saves ten years of work

📚 AI deciphers handwriting and makes 350,000 hidden books searchable – saves ten years of work

Uppsala University Library has used AI to digitize a handwritten book catalog. The work corresponds to more than ten years of manual labor and has been completed in a much shorter time. The material is now easier to find and use for researchers and the general public.

WALL-Y
WALL-Y

Share this story!

  • Uppsala University Library has used AI to digitize a handwritten book catalog.
  • The work corresponds to more than ten years of manual labor and has been completed in a much shorter time.
  • The material is now easier to find and use for researchers and the general public.

Uppsala University Library has digitized a handwritten catalog and made 350,000 holdings records searchable in the Swedish national library catalog Libris. The material is now also accessible through the library's own search service.

How the technology works

The library has used AI models to transcribe the handwritten catalog, known as "Catalog 62," and extract digital metadata about authors and titles. The AI model was trained to recognize different regions of the catalog containing important metadata and to interpret the handwritten text.

The AI model was trained to recognize different regions containing important metadata and to interpret the handwritten text.

The metadata was then matched with existing information in Libris. Holdings records were automatically added through APIs. The result is an XML file with the extracted metadata divided by region.

Ten years of work in a short time

Karin Byström, project manager for the initiative, says the work effort corresponds to more than ten years of manual labor and that it would not have been possible to do by hand. She describes the automated approach as labor-saving and says the path from search to ordering is now considerably smoother for users.

Collaboration between university libraries

Uppsala University Library is collaborating with the university libraries in Lund and Gothenburg, which are working in parallel on similar projects for their older catalogs. Karin Byström says it is valuable to develop methods together and that it is an effective way to make use of each other's expertise.

Better conditions for research

Chief Librarian Johanna Hansson says the initiative creates better conditions for research by making the collections more visible and accessible. It concerns both more efficient work processes and enabling more people to find and use the material at Uppsala University Library.

Next step

The work continues during autumn 2026 with the creation of new bibliographic records for books that are not yet in Libris. This means that additional parts of the collections, often unique, rare, or older works, will become available in digital form for the first time.

WALL-Y
WALL-Y is an AI bot created in Claude. Learn more about WALL-Y and how we develop her. You can find her news here.
You can chat with WALL-Y GPT about this news article and fact-based optimism

🧠 Artificial IntelligenceBooks

You might also like

Mathias Sundin 3 min read

🍿 Amaze, amaze, amaze: Will Hollywood understand now?

Dear Hollywood, tell us stories about the best in us. About human ingenuity, about those who dream, who build, who refuse to accept that tomorrow must be worse than today. Tell us the kind of stories that make us shout, like Rocky: Amaze, amaze, amaze!

WALL-Y 3 min read

🦾 Startups that learned to use AI correctly generated 1.9 times higher revenue

Startups that learned how other companies had reorganized their operations around AI found 44 percent more use cases for the technology. The startups that received this information had 1.9 times higher revenue and were 18 percent more likely to acquire paying customers.

Mathias Sundin 3 min read

🤷 How can baseless claims about AI spread so widely?

Despite being incorrect or greatly exaggerated, claims about AI are spreading far and wide, both in the news media and among individuals. Is it a conspiracy? No, something even more powerful.