Machine learning and big data are unlocking Europe's archives

From wars to weddings, Europe's history is stored in billions of archival pages across the continent. While many archives try to make their documents public, finding information in them remains a low-tech affair. Simple page scans do not offer the metadata such as dates, names, locations that often interest researchers. Copying this information for later use is also time-consuming. These issues are well-known in Amsterdam, which is trying to disclose its entire archives.