SA12 Using AI to Re-Imagine an Enslaved/Enslaver Project

Saturday, 24 May 2025, 9:45 a.m., French room

NGSQ’s Tabitha emerged from hundreds of sources. Processing “leftover” wills and deeds with available AI tools answers questions raised by the published findings.
This session will provide a review of the original article [Leslie Elaine Anderson, MSLS, “Tabitha (Bugg) George Smith of Mecklenburg County, Virginia,” NGSQ 103 (March 2015): 5-18] and a discussion of the massive amount of research that raised even more questions about Tabitha’s family and its origin. Essential to that success was parallel research into the origins of the enslaver’s family. It will then provide an introduction to the rapidly evolving world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and will present the benefits and limitations of AI, e.g. efficiency, organization. Finally, it will include a number of examples of how these tools can be applied to past and active research using the Tabitha article as an example.

Leslie Anderson is a former librarian with 20+ years of experience in reference services, a 2020 Virginia Humanities Scholar, and project editor of Virginia Slave Births Index, 1853-1865.

Registrants who check in at the Louisville registration desk can access this and all the lectures they don’t catch in person on the Whova app until 15 July 2025.

Registration is now open!