Local AI tools can do a remarkably good job of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and transcription of speech from audio and video files. The use of local processing allows a researcher to meet requirements for handling of sensitive materials, without risk of sharing content with online services. This workshop will demonstrate several applications suitable for various uses in this context.

Objectives: You will get an overview of the affordances of various applications for OCR and audio transcription. You will also see demonstrations of these processes, with introductions to the tools used to build and run them.

Completion of this workshop can contribute to a partial requirement of the University of Alberta Professional Development program by the Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies (GPS). Information on how attendance will be recorded will be discussed in the workshop.

THIS WORKSHOP IS ONLY AVAILABLE ONLINE.

About the Instructor: Peter Binkley is the Digital Scholarship Technologies Librarian, and has been a librarian at the U of A for 24 years. His focus is on helping students and researchers apply digital techniques to their scholarship (broadly defined). This includes areas like the sharing of research online using durable static websites, the use of core digital tools like git and python, and most recently the use of local Large Language Models to apply AI techniques to research problems safely and securely. He has an MLIS and a Ph.D. (in Medieval Studies, working on 13th- and 14th-century Latin texts and manuscripts). Any questions about the workshop can be directed to peter.binkley@ualberta.ca.