Ben Brumfield
@benwbrum.bsky.social
Open Source #DigitalHumanities software engineer.
Founder of FromThePage.com, a platform for collaborative #manuscript #transcription to engage the public in #archives and create digital scholarly editions.
Founder of FromThePage.com, a platform for collaborative #manuscript #transcription to engage the public in #archives and create digital scholarly editions.
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/can-voluntee...
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...
content.fromthepage.com
October 23, 2025 at 5:25 PM
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/can-voluntee...
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.
September 15, 2025 at 3:34 PM
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.
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!
folder 1251: Correspondence, 1865 (Cameron Family Papers - Records of Enslavement) | FromThePage
folder 1251: Correspondence, 1865 (Cameron Family Papers - Records of Enslavement) - read Work.
fromthepage.com
August 20, 2025 at 12:31 PM
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!
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
What's the Character Error Rate of a Volunteer? Analyzing accuracy in cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects | @benwbrum.bsky.social | #DH2025
July 18, 2025 at 11:22 AM
What's the Character Error Rate of a Volunteer? Analyzing accuracy in cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects | @benwbrum.bsky.social | #DH2025
Sara and I were interviewed for the SAA Archives in Context podcast! archivesincontext.archivists.org/2025/06/27/s...
Season 9, Episode 3: Ben and Sara Brumfield
Join co-hosts Lauren Kata and Emily Mathay as they chat with Ben and Sara Brumfield, co-founders of Brumfield Labs, about the future of AI in the archives. Sara and Ben discuss their ongoing work d…
archivesincontext.archivists.org
July 3, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Sara and I were interviewed for the SAA Archives in Context podcast! archivesincontext.archivists.org/2025/06/27/s...
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.
July 2, 2025 at 2:09 PM
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.
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
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.
June 13, 2025 at 1:17 PM
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.
Does Oxford University Press no longer publicize conference discounts or holiday sales?
June 9, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Does Oxford University Press no longer publicize conference discounts or holiday sales?
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
roadstaken.org
May 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM
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
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
Our first transcribathon event is today!
April 10, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Our first transcribathon event is today!
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
Crowdsourced transcription platform FromThePage has long championed public participation in historical research.
Find out how they used Transkribus' AI technology to help their volunteer transcribers in this Success Story 👇
blog.transkribus.org/en/fromthepa...
@benwbrum.bsky.social
Find out how they used Transkribus' AI technology to help their volunteer transcribers in this Success Story 👇
blog.transkribus.org/en/fromthepa...
@benwbrum.bsky.social
How FromThePage enhanced their transcription platform with the Transkribus API
Discover how FromThePage leveraged Transkribus' AI technology to enhance their transcription platform, making historical documents accessible and engaging for volunteers.
blog.transkribus.org
April 11, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Crowdsourced transcription platform FromThePage has long championed public participation in historical research.
Find out how they used Transkribus' AI technology to help their volunteer transcribers in this Success Story 👇
blog.transkribus.org/en/fromthepa...
@benwbrum.bsky.social
Find out how they used Transkribus' AI technology to help their volunteer transcribers in this Success Story 👇
blog.transkribus.org/en/fromthepa...
@benwbrum.bsky.social
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
Like many other #NEH -funded projects. the #sferaproject received notice yesterday that our grant has been cancelled. It's not yet clear what that means for the project, but we hope to have more info soon. Meanwhile, here's a screenshot of what they cancelled (our website-in-development):
April 4, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Like many other #NEH -funded projects. the #sferaproject received notice yesterday that our grant has been cancelled. It's not yet clear what that means for the project, but we hope to have more info soon. Meanwhile, here's a screenshot of what they cancelled (our website-in-development):
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
A total of 44,091 manuscript pages have now been completed by Transcribe Bentham volunteers, with a further 361 in progress, and 10 awaiting review 👏
April 4, 2025 at 1:42 PM
A total of 44,091 manuscript pages have now been completed by Transcribe Bentham volunteers, with a further 361 in progress, and 10 awaiting review 👏
Excited to learn that our proposal for the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries was accepted! I still can't believe how lucky I am to have an amazing digital library conference an hour's walk from my house. #TCDL2025
March 31, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Excited to learn that our proposal for the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries was accepted! I still can't believe how lucky I am to have an amazing digital library conference an hour's walk from my house. #TCDL2025
Has anyone experimented with automated hand or script identification using #HTR or multi-modal #LLM AI tools? It would be interesting to locate pages within a corpus written in multiple hands--especially if the scripts were different enough to indicate different social classes of writers.
March 27, 2025 at 4:23 PM
ISAC (formerly OI-UChicago) is offering an eight-week course in #Hieroglyphic #Luwian online through their continuing education program, May 29-July 24. I took the Sumerian class they offered a couple of years ago and was impressed -- it's well worth the $400.
www.eventbrite.com/e/introducti...
www.eventbrite.com/e/introducti...
Introduction to Hieroglyphic Luwian
Learn an ancient Anatolian language!
www.eventbrite.com
March 25, 2025 at 2:40 PM
ISAC (formerly OI-UChicago) is offering an eight-week course in #Hieroglyphic #Luwian online through their continuing education program, May 29-July 24. I took the Sumerian class they offered a couple of years ago and was impressed -- it's well worth the $400.
www.eventbrite.com/e/introducti...
www.eventbrite.com/e/introducti...
At some point in the next few years, I'd like to take a course on Old English. As a 50-year-old with a career, it'll probably need to be online. The "Ancient Language Institute" offers one, but I've never heard of them. Any advice? #classicists? #medievalists?
March 25, 2025 at 1:50 PM
At some point in the next few years, I'd like to take a course on Old English. As a 50-year-old with a career, it'll probably need to be online. The "Ancient Language Institute" offers one, but I've never heard of them. Any advice? #classicists? #medievalists?
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
August 24(?), 1790 exerpt from the log of the sloop Dolphin, kept by Capt. Benjamin Paddock, Jr. on a whaling voyage from Nantucket to the Bahamas and down to the West Indies, 1790-91.
fromthepage.com/nharl/ships-...
fromthepage.com/nharl/ships-...
March 13, 2025 at 2:57 PM
August 24(?), 1790 exerpt from the log of the sloop Dolphin, kept by Capt. Benjamin Paddock, Jr. on a whaling voyage from Nantucket to the Bahamas and down to the West Indies, 1790-91.
fromthepage.com/nharl/ships-...
fromthepage.com/nharl/ships-...
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
This call permits commercial subcontracting! Needless to say: reach out to me if you are in need for a tool builder experienced in all things #DigitalHumanities, #IIIF, image- and text annotation, web maps, and #UI/#UX for #DH 🙂
OSCARS Open Calls: oscars-project.eu/open-calls Funding for FAIR/Open Science/citizen sciency-y projects, innovative software & services. 🤔 Wondering if there's an opportunity for a #IIIF related submission... Deadline mid-May #research #funding
About OSCARS Open Calls | OSCARS
To support the research communities to take up open science and foster the involvement of scientists in EOSC, OSCARS has launched two Open Calls (in total worth about 16 million Euro) to select third-...
oscars-project.eu
March 14, 2025 at 11:14 AM
This call permits commercial subcontracting! Needless to say: reach out to me if you are in need for a tool builder experienced in all things #DigitalHumanities, #IIIF, image- and text annotation, web maps, and #UI/#UX for #DH 🙂
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
Hello all manuscript fans! As we are approaching St Brigit's day, why not transcribe some of Cogitosus' Vita S. Brigidae in her honour? Images from the Cambrai manuscript ready to go here -> fromthepage.com/nicolev/eih-... #Brigit #medievalsky @historytcd.bsky.social @researchireland.bsky.social
CAMBRAI, Bibliothèque municipale, 0865 - Cogitosus' Life of St Brigit (Early Irish Hands TranSCRIPTion Challenge) | FromThePage
CAMBRAI, Bibliothèque municipale, 0865 - Cogitosus' Life of St Brigit (Early Irish Hands TranSCRIPTion Challenge) - read Work. Try your hand at transcribing the Life of St Brigit! The copy of the ...
fromthepage.com
January 30, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Hello all manuscript fans! As we are approaching St Brigit's day, why not transcribe some of Cogitosus' Vita S. Brigidae in her honour? Images from the Cambrai manuscript ready to go here -> fromthepage.com/nicolev/eih-... #Brigit #medievalsky @historytcd.bsky.social @researchireland.bsky.social
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
We are offering two FREE, online semi-intensive short courses in #Phoenician and Punic #language in April 🏛️ 🏺
Elementary course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/eleme...
Intermediate course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/inter...
Share and Apply by 22 March!
Elementary course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/eleme...
Intermediate course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/inter...
Share and Apply by 22 March!
Elementary Phoenician – Grammar and Inscriptions
ics.sas.ac.uk
March 10, 2025 at 8:38 PM
We are offering two FREE, online semi-intensive short courses in #Phoenician and Punic #language in April 🏛️ 🏺
Elementary course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/eleme...
Intermediate course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/inter...
Share and Apply by 22 March!
Elementary course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/eleme...
Intermediate course info: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/inter...
Share and Apply by 22 March!
One bright spot in my life is that "What's the Character Error Rate of a Volunteer?", my short paper for #DH2025 was accepted. If nothing happens, I'll see a lot of you #crowdsourcing #digitalhumanities people in Lisbon.
March 5, 2025 at 3:42 AM
One bright spot in my life is that "What's the Character Error Rate of a Volunteer?", my short paper for #DH2025 was accepted. If nothing happens, I'll see a lot of you #crowdsourcing #digitalhumanities people in Lisbon.
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
GLAM folk, got perspectives on 'Participatory Science' (or citizen history, citizen science, crowdsourcing) to share for a special edition of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (CSTP) Journal?
Abstracts to forms.gle/tZmaSEPixgAU... - by February 28
More:
participatorysciences.org/2024/11/07/c...
Abstracts to forms.gle/tZmaSEPixgAU... - by February 28
More:
participatorysciences.org/2024/11/07/c...
CSTP Special Collection Abstract Submission Form
Thank you for your interest in submitting an abstract for this Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (CSTP) Special Collection entitled "Lessons, Challenges, and Opportunities in Participatory Science ...
forms.gle
February 19, 2025 at 3:28 PM
GLAM folk, got perspectives on 'Participatory Science' (or citizen history, citizen science, crowdsourcing) to share for a special edition of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (CSTP) Journal?
Abstracts to forms.gle/tZmaSEPixgAU... - by February 28
More:
participatorysciences.org/2024/11/07/c...
Abstracts to forms.gle/tZmaSEPixgAU... - by February 28
More:
participatorysciences.org/2024/11/07/c...
Reposted by Ben Brumfield
Another option is to include a range, e.g. 1480-1490, but that suggests that the date can't be 1479 or 1491. It's a real problem that most Library databases aren't equipped to solve yet.
January 27, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Another option is to include a range, e.g. 1480-1490, but that suggests that the date can't be 1479 or 1491. It's a real problem that most Library databases aren't equipped to solve yet.