Amalia S. Levi
@amaliasl.bsky.social
Archives, life writing, history. Research focus: Caribbean Jewish history; slavery; record-keeping & archival dependencies; digital history. https://hcommons.org/members/amaliasl/
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
Coming March 2026 from @yalepress.bsky.social - Sumana Roy's beautiful translations of Jagadish Chandra Bose's work on plants, whose voices he recorded through stunning technologies + vocabularies.
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
The Man Who Made Plants Write
An internationally celebrated poet and critic translates Jagadish Chandra Bose’s revolutionary writings on plant sentience and communicationJagadish Chandr...
yalebooks.yale.edu
November 26, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Coming March 2026 from @yalepress.bsky.social - Sumana Roy's beautiful translations of Jagadish Chandra Bose's work on plants, whose voices he recorded through stunning technologies + vocabularies.
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
It's weird to not only have lived through an information revolution but also now living through its undoing, all within less than a generation.
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 12:19 PM
It's weird to not only have lived through an information revolution but also now living through its undoing, all within less than a generation.
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
We’re delighted to announce that the newly remodeled Getty Provenance Index has won Digital Innovation of the Year in this year’s Apollo Awards. [🧵10/10]
Learn more:
www.getty.edu/tracingart/
Learn more:
www.getty.edu/tracingart/
Tracing Art
How the Getty Provenance Index is transforming research on the social life of art
www.getty.edu
November 24, 2025 at 7:31 PM
We’re delighted to announce that the newly remodeled Getty Provenance Index has won Digital Innovation of the Year in this year’s Apollo Awards. [🧵10/10]
Learn more:
www.getty.edu/tracingart/
Learn more:
www.getty.edu/tracingart/
There aren't enough words in the world to express my gratitude for all the @archive.org does!!! I had "lost" 5 blogposts, but found them archived in @waybackmachine.bsky.social
Also: humanity's digital memory hangs from literal threads & we're so foolish to believe that digital stuff are "forever."
Also: humanity's digital memory hangs from literal threads & we're so foolish to believe that digital stuff are "forever."
We are back. Our provider found and repaired a fiber issue last night and traffic has returned. We are sorry for the disruption.
The Wayback Machine, openlibrary.org, and some other archive.org functions are offline because some network gear has failed.
We apologize and are working on it. More as it happens.
We apologize and are working on it. More as it happens.
November 24, 2025 at 3:38 PM
There aren't enough words in the world to express my gratitude for all the @archive.org does!!! I had "lost" 5 blogposts, but found them archived in @waybackmachine.bsky.social
Also: humanity's digital memory hangs from literal threads & we're so foolish to believe that digital stuff are "forever."
Also: humanity's digital memory hangs from literal threads & we're so foolish to believe that digital stuff are "forever."
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
I'm so grateful our project, "Voices in Slavery's Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana," was funded! @dianapaton.bsky.social, Linsey McMillan, @juanitacox.bsky.social, @pbhellawell.bsky.social, Estherine Adams, and Jamie McLaughlin
www.ed.ac.uk/news/project...
www.ed.ac.uk/news/project...
Project to map enslaved people’s testimony | News | The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh historians will investigate slavery and the law in British Guiana, now Guyana, in a new three year-long project.
www.ed.ac.uk
November 24, 2025 at 10:48 AM
I'm so grateful our project, "Voices in Slavery's Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana," was funded! @dianapaton.bsky.social, Linsey McMillan, @juanitacox.bsky.social, @pbhellawell.bsky.social, Estherine Adams, and Jamie McLaughlin
www.ed.ac.uk/news/project...
www.ed.ac.uk/news/project...
"Ongoing digitization and cataloging work not only serves the interests of scholars and manuscript communities—it also creates crucial, publicly-accessible provenance records that provide an increasingly robust bulwark against manuscript theft and trafficking."
hmml.org/stories/reve...
hmml.org/stories/reve...
Reversal of Fates: Access Through Photographs can be a Counterbalance
“Cultural losses continue to beset communities around the world, especially in areas subject to armed conflict...”
hmml.org
November 24, 2025 at 8:27 AM
"Ongoing digitization and cataloging work not only serves the interests of scholars and manuscript communities—it also creates crucial, publicly-accessible provenance records that provide an increasingly robust bulwark against manuscript theft and trafficking."
hmml.org/stories/reve...
hmml.org/stories/reve...
"This is the first study that uses proteomics to analyze Renaissance recipes, and the very first to use in-depth archival research to contextualize proteomics results."
NEW PUBLICATION
Our @historians.org American Historical Review article presents a pathbreaking methodology to analyse the invisible biochemical traces that #earlymodern users left behind on the surface of paper recipes
doi.org/10.1093/ahr/...
Our @historians.org American Historical Review article presents a pathbreaking methodology to analyse the invisible biochemical traces that #earlymodern users left behind on the surface of paper recipes
doi.org/10.1093/ahr/...
The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes: Proteomics, Medicine, and the Body in the Material Renaissance
Abstract. Collaborations between the humanities and sciences allow for novel insights into the material world of Renaissance recipe cultures, and in partic
doi.org
November 21, 2025 at 1:07 PM
"This is the first study that uses proteomics to analyze Renaissance recipes, and the very first to use in-depth archival research to contextualize proteomics results."
I very much appreciate research at scale on the representativeness of and biases in digitized archival collections.
Some examples below.
🧵
Some examples below.
🧵
November 18, 2025 at 5:08 PM
I very much appreciate research at scale on the representativeness of and biases in digitized archival collections.
Some examples below.
🧵
Some examples below.
🧵
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
A total of 150 million document images have already been processed in Transkribus!
Stacked on top of each other, they would form an impressive 15-kilometre-high tower—almost double the height of Mount Everest. 🏔️
Stacked on top of each other, they would form an impressive 15-kilometre-high tower—almost double the height of Mount Everest. 🏔️
November 18, 2025 at 10:00 AM
A total of 150 million document images have already been processed in Transkribus!
Stacked on top of each other, they would form an impressive 15-kilometre-high tower—almost double the height of Mount Everest. 🏔️
Stacked on top of each other, they would form an impressive 15-kilometre-high tower—almost double the height of Mount Everest. 🏔️
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
!Stop Press! Article on bias in digitised newspaper collections: ’Whose News’, in the new journal of @comphumresearch.bsky.social by Kaspar Beelen, @jonhistorian61.bsky.social, @kmcdono.bsky.social and me. See blog for summary & 🧵 1/7
Article doi.org/10.1017/chr....
Blog is.gd/2IFc30
#dh #c19 🗃️
Article doi.org/10.1017/chr....
Blog is.gd/2IFc30
#dh #c19 🗃️
Whose news? Critical methods for assessing bias in large historical datasets | Computational Humanities Research | Cambridge Core
Whose news? Critical methods for assessing bias in large historical datasets - Volume 1
doi.org
November 11, 2025 at 4:05 PM
!Stop Press! Article on bias in digitised newspaper collections: ’Whose News’, in the new journal of @comphumresearch.bsky.social by Kaspar Beelen, @jonhistorian61.bsky.social, @kmcdono.bsky.social and me. See blog for summary & 🧵 1/7
Article doi.org/10.1017/chr....
Blog is.gd/2IFc30
#dh #c19 🗃️
Article doi.org/10.1017/chr....
Blog is.gd/2IFc30
#dh #c19 🗃️
Great write-up of the emotional context surrounding written documents that we usually encounter flattened out in folders in the research room.
Beautiful art that draws the gaze to the act of the creation of letters as a distillations of emotions.
Beautiful art that draws the gaze to the act of the creation of letters as a distillations of emotions.
JUST PUBLISHED! In our latest article we examine the 17th century craze for writing and reading letters, and how this became a major feature in Dutch art, featuring in masterful paintings by artists such as Gabriel Metsu and Jan Vermeer www.artinsociety.com/gabriel-mets...
November 10, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Great write-up of the emotional context surrounding written documents that we usually encounter flattened out in folders in the research room.
Beautiful art that draws the gaze to the act of the creation of letters as a distillations of emotions.
Beautiful art that draws the gaze to the act of the creation of letters as a distillations of emotions.
😂 😂😂
Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry
November 5, 2025 at 3:53 PM
😂 😂😂
😍😍😍 OMG! *How* beautiful is this user interface. So many wonderful ways to search and navigate archival material! The ability to compile life stories clustering personal "life archives"--simply stunning.
Congrats @timhitchcock.bsky.social and all involved.
Congrats @timhitchcock.bsky.social and all involved.
Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/
London Lives
www.londonlives.org
November 5, 2025 at 12:48 PM
😍😍😍 OMG! *How* beautiful is this user interface. So many wonderful ways to search and navigate archival material! The ability to compile life stories clustering personal "life archives"--simply stunning.
Congrats @timhitchcock.bsky.social and all involved.
Congrats @timhitchcock.bsky.social and all involved.
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
What do pirates in Madagascar, a red knitted jumper, the sunken warship Vasa, captivity and colonialism, and the Prize Papers have in common? They're all part of our new online lecture series "Ships & Seafaring 1500–1800". Join us weekly on Mondays, 1pm CET, on Zoom #earlymodern #maritimehistory 🗃️
November 5, 2025 at 5:49 AM
What do pirates in Madagascar, a red knitted jumper, the sunken warship Vasa, captivity and colonialism, and the Prize Papers have in common? They're all part of our new online lecture series "Ships & Seafaring 1500–1800". Join us weekly on Mondays, 1pm CET, on Zoom #earlymodern #maritimehistory 🗃️
"...while recent models show competence in recursive knowledge tasks, they still rely on inconsistent reasoning strategies, suggesting superficial pattern matching rather than robust epistemic understanding."
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact - Nature Machine Intelligence
Suzgun et al. find that current large language models cannot reliably distinguish between belief, knowledge and fact, raising concerns for their use in healthcare, law and journalism, where such disti...
www.nature.com
November 5, 2025 at 9:35 AM
"...while recent models show competence in recursive knowledge tasks, they still rely on inconsistent reasoning strategies, suggesting superficial pattern matching rather than robust epistemic understanding."
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
Transkribus is the handwritten text recognition tool that we used to transcribe 25,000 wills from 1540-1790 for our Leverhulme project.
Beginners' guide here 👇
#DigitalHumanities 🗃️ #EarlyModern
Beginners' guide here 👇
#DigitalHumanities 🗃️ #EarlyModern
Did you miss our beginners' webinar last week? The complete recording of our step-by-step introduction to Transkribus is now available on YouTube 👇
Transkribus Webinar for Beginners (English)
Transkribus is the most popular tools for automatic text recognition of historical documents.
By watching this webinar recording, you will learn how to upload documents to Transkribus, perform…
youtu.be
November 4, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Transkribus is the handwritten text recognition tool that we used to transcribe 25,000 wills from 1540-1790 for our Leverhulme project.
Beginners' guide here 👇
#DigitalHumanities 🗃️ #EarlyModern
Beginners' guide here 👇
#DigitalHumanities 🗃️ #EarlyModern
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
oooooooo! Foundling tokens are being nominated for Unesco's International Memory of the World Register! With archives in Portugal, Italy, Argentina, and Belgium nominating.
also VERY handy overview of collections with foundling tokens in that nomination form: ebesluit.antwerpen.be/zittingen/25...
also VERY handy overview of collections with foundling tokens in that nomination form: ebesluit.antwerpen.be/zittingen/25...
October 29, 2025 at 4:49 PM
oooooooo! Foundling tokens are being nominated for Unesco's International Memory of the World Register! With archives in Portugal, Italy, Argentina, and Belgium nominating.
also VERY handy overview of collections with foundling tokens in that nomination form: ebesluit.antwerpen.be/zittingen/25...
also VERY handy overview of collections with foundling tokens in that nomination form: ebesluit.antwerpen.be/zittingen/25...
"...the goal isn't to automate everything, but to amplify our capabilities while preserving the values and standards that make libraries essential cultural institutions."
Some thoughts from recent talks: 'AI and Machine Learning in Libraries: Promising, But Not Ready Yet' www.openobjects.org.uk/2025/10/ai-a...
AI and Machine Learning in Libraries: Promising, But Not Ready Yet – Open Objects
Open Objects
www.openobjects.org.uk
October 23, 2025 at 6:15 PM
"...the goal isn't to automate everything, but to amplify our capabilities while preserving the values and standards that make libraries essential cultural institutions."
Records manager, archivist, digital archivist
quantitative methods, qualitative methods, mixed methods
October 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Records manager, archivist, digital archivist
Reposted by Amalia S. Levi
The Introduction to Digital Publishing Handbook from the Digital Library of the Caribbean offers a guide to creating and sharing text-based digital publications.
Read the handbook at dloc.com/AA00114845/0...
#DigitalPublishing #OpenAccess #dLOC #CaribbeanArchives
Read the handbook at dloc.com/AA00114845/0...
#DigitalPublishing #OpenAccess #dLOC #CaribbeanArchives
October 7, 2025 at 7:52 PM
The Introduction to Digital Publishing Handbook from the Digital Library of the Caribbean offers a guide to creating and sharing text-based digital publications.
Read the handbook at dloc.com/AA00114845/0...
#DigitalPublishing #OpenAccess #dLOC #CaribbeanArchives
Read the handbook at dloc.com/AA00114845/0...
#DigitalPublishing #OpenAccess #dLOC #CaribbeanArchives
📣 Officially submitted--all 450 pages of it!
My PhD dissertation titled "Dependent Lives In and Beyond Archives: Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Early Modern Bridgetown, Barbados (1654-1800)."
Defense is being scheduled for December!
My PhD dissertation titled "Dependent Lives In and Beyond Archives: Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Early Modern Bridgetown, Barbados (1654-1800)."
Defense is being scheduled for December!
October 6, 2025 at 2:30 PM
📣 Officially submitted--all 450 pages of it!
My PhD dissertation titled "Dependent Lives In and Beyond Archives: Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Early Modern Bridgetown, Barbados (1654-1800)."
Defense is being scheduled for December!
My PhD dissertation titled "Dependent Lives In and Beyond Archives: Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Early Modern Bridgetown, Barbados (1654-1800)."
Defense is being scheduled for December!
Great to see the emphasis on public engagement as a way of giving back to the community, in crowdsourcing projects.
Important point: building the time for it into the workplan.
Important point: building the time for it into the workplan.
📢NEW POST📢
I had a chat with Catherine Hurcombe for the Public Engagement with Research at Exeter series.
Read on to learn more about the wills project engagement with volunteers and artists👇
#EarlyModern 🗃️ @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social
sites.exeter.ac.uk/per/2025/09/...
I had a chat with Catherine Hurcombe for the Public Engagement with Research at Exeter series.
Read on to learn more about the wills project engagement with volunteers and artists👇
#EarlyModern 🗃️ @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social
sites.exeter.ac.uk/per/2025/09/...
What's in a Will? Using Public Engagement to Add Depth to a Project
In this interview, Catherine Hurcombe speaks to Dr Laura Sangha from the Department of Archaeology and History about her role on the research project, The Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790,...
sites.exeter.ac.uk
October 6, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Great to see the emphasis on public engagement as a way of giving back to the community, in crowdsourcing projects.
Important point: building the time for it into the workplan.
Important point: building the time for it into the workplan.
Putting final touches to my dissertation and hope to submit it tomorrow, and I keep thinking that I can't thank enough all the amazing, awesome people behind @zotero.org not only for creating it, but also for sustaining! Such a huge service!
September 24, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Putting final touches to my dissertation and hope to submit it tomorrow, and I keep thinking that I can't thank enough all the amazing, awesome people behind @zotero.org not only for creating it, but also for sustaining! Such a huge service!
Beautiful archives and library infrastructure! 😍
(And lots of labor behind it!)
(And lots of labor behind it!)
Always a joy to be at the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk Collections Storage Facility - around 14 m collection items preserved there for students and scholars
September 5, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Beautiful archives and library infrastructure! 😍
(And lots of labor behind it!)
(And lots of labor behind it!)
Great discussion by @drjpw.bsky.social about ethical/methodological pitfalls of legacy descriptions of archival material, and the need to be sensitive to lived experience of marginalized people in the past.
Are you curious about the potential for archival practices to shape the study of emotion; why there are letters in the English State Papers labelled 'mad'; or how the culture & politics of Elizabethan England shaped people's experience of distress? Find out here! doi.org/10.1017/S008... #earlymodern
‘your poore distressed suppliant’: ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society | Cambridge Core
‘your poore distressed suppliant’: ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England
doi.org
September 2, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Great discussion by @drjpw.bsky.social about ethical/methodological pitfalls of legacy descriptions of archival material, and the need to be sensitive to lived experience of marginalized people in the past.