Unlocking our Digital Past with Artificial Intelligence (LUSTRE) was a project based at Loughborough University that seeks to better understand how AI can help improve the preservation, access to and usability of government archives produced in digital form.
About
About the LUSTRE project
Team
Meet the LUSTRE project team
Events
See what events we have planned
Outputs
Ongoing project outputs
The project team collaborated with Cabinet Office colleagues to better understand the potential impact of AI on contemporary public records, the archivists preserving and managing them, and the researchers accessing them. An objective of the project was to create a cross-sector network on born-digital archives, connecting government professionals with academics and GLAM professionals.
The project hosted five workshops and four lunchtime talks, and produced interviews and multiple publications.
The project was funded by a follow-on grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from 2022 to 2024.
From 2025, it was funded by the Impact & Knowledge Exchange Accelerator, drawn from the Higher Education Innovation Fund administered by Loughborough University. The project subsequently expanded into a UK/US project, and became known as LUSTRE/GLOW.
It delivered two workshops, conducted a series of interviews with professionals and researchers working with born-digital archives, and produced an open-access report.
In 2026, this work developed further through GLOW-Ready, which explored how generative AI could support responsible access to born-digital government archives. Further details are available in the project summary.