GLOW-Ready (Getting Government Archives GenAI-Ready) Workshop 2

Location: Online

👉 Read the workshop report: GLOW-Ready Workshops Report

About the project

GLOW-Ready: Getting Government Archives GenAI-Ready for Users is a research project led by Loughborough University, working with partners including The National Archives, the Cabinet Office, PRONI, the National Library of Wales, and the Intellectual Property Office. The project builds on earlier LUSTRE/GLOW projects, which started in 2022.

Government archives hold born-digital records (emails, documents, audio, and video) that are vital for public accountability, historical understanding, and civic participation, yet they remain difficult to access and use at scale. Driven by the rise of generative AI (GenAI), users of these archives increasingly expect conversational discovery, rapid synthesis, and transparent provenance (what a record is, where it came from, and how an answer was produced). Archives and Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) teams need practical, user-informed ways to adapt their services responsibly, while respecting confidentiality, privacy, and other constraints.

To address these issues, the project is running three workshops bringing together archival and KIM professionals with academic researchers, journalists, and public users of archives; producing a practical guidance pack and training materials; and building and testing a secure, citation-grounded, RAG archival discovery prototype.

Who the workshops are for

The workshop will bring together people who use archives (including government archives): academic researchers, journalists, family historians and genealogists, KIM professionals, and anyone with an interest in accessing official records. Speakers are invited because of their direct experiences and insights as users – what they look for, how they look for it, what helps them find it, and what gets in the way.

What the workshops will cover

The workshop will combine keynote addresses, short presentations, roundtable discussions, and structured breakout groups. It will focus on:

• Understanding user needs and expectations
• AI-assisted discovery in practice
• Identifying priorities for AI-assisted government archives
• Issues of trust, transparency, sensitivity, and responsible access

Workshop agenda

13:00 – 13:10 | Welcome and Introduction 

Recap of Workshop 1 and objectives of the day 

Speaker: Prof Lise Jaillant, Loughborough University 

13:10 – 13:45 | Keynote 

13:10 – 13:30 Prof Ian Milligan, University of Waterloo 

What the AI Won’t Tell You: Absence and the Architecture of Trust 

13:30 – 13:45 Q&A 

13:45 – 14:35 | Session 1: Understanding User Needs and Expectations 

13:45 – 13:55 Prof Claire Warwick, Durham University 

A Love Hate Relationship? What we Know about the Users of AI 

13:55 – 14:05 Prof Glen O’Hara, Oxford Brookes University 

The “Deluge” of Data in Contemporary History: How Can Practitioners Cope? 

14:05 – 14:15 Neil Jakeman, King’s College London 

Exploring Models of Practical Federation  

14:15 – 14:35 Q&A  

14:35 – 15:20 | Roundtable Discussion 

15:20 – 15:30 | Break  

15:30 – 16:10 | Session 2: Responsible Access and Reuse 

15:30 – 15:40 Dr Trevor Owens, American Institute of Physics 

Scale & Sensemaking: Provocations on Generative AI & Born Digital Records 

15:40 – 15:50 Prof Leif Isaksen, University of Exeter 

Some Assembly Required: Archives and Agency in an Age of Agentic AI 

15:50 – 16:10 Q&A  

16:10 – 16:15 | Closing Remarks