Memory of the Future
non-profit organisation

Archival research, digitisation and AI

An object without a document is just a stone. How we find the document and what we do with it.

Archival records

Digitisation, handwriting recognition and AI

The third strand is handwritten registers and case files. First the photography: spread after spread, in even light and without flash, because flash washes out faded ink. Then the images are worked on: AI models help to make out the handwriting, to bring a dozen spellings of one surname together, and to suggest which volume holds the year missing from the sequence. The last word stays with the researcher — AI is confidently wrong exactly where the clerk abbreviated a word or changed hands mid-book, so every reading is checked against the original.

A spread of a handwritten 19th-century parish register with a table of entries
A spread from an 1870s parish register: dozens of entries to a page, Latin with local abbreviations.
Close-up of handwritten register entries, columns Nomen and Nomen et conditio
The same spread up close: the columns Nomen and Nomen et conditio — child, parents, godparents.
A page from a 1937 secret police case file, photographed in an archive reading room
A 1937 case file — the pages are photographed in the reading room, one at a time.
A 1937 arrest questionnaire: surname, year of birth, place of birth, occupation
An arrest questionnaire: year and place of birth, trade, address — what a parish register never records.

The images come from scans held by the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (AGAD), from a register the organisation worked through for its own research, and from the family archive of the head of the organisation: a 1937 case file opened against his great-grandfather, later rehabilitated. Material photographed for someone else's commission is never published here.

Capability

What we can do with manuscripts

Not a statement of intent. Below is what the organisation works with and can carry out for a partner institution, museum or community.

Digitising handwritten registers

Photographing spreads in the reading room: even light, no flash, guided by the volume's own internal index. What comes out is a complete set of images, fit both for reading and for keeping.

Handwriting recognition and AI

The images are put through AI models: they propose a reading for each line, bring together different spellings of the same surname, and flag gaps in the numbering. The researcher decides — here AI is a tool, not a source.