From dusty archives to digital gold: How AI became my unofficial archive assistant

Rog Peach

Lead admin, The Lerpoolians · ToucanTech Ambassador

5 min read

Like many of us who look after school community platforms, I initially regarded the relentless hype around artificial intelligence with a healthy dose of British scepticism. Was it truly the dawn of a new era, or just an over-caffeinated Google search with slightly better manners?

Being mercifully unencumbered by a restrictive school IT network, I wasn't marched down the Microsoft Copilot path. I had a brief look at Perplexity, bypassed ChatGPT, and somewhat casually began tinkering with Google's Gemini.

Within a fortnight, I was quietly convinced that what I was doing practically amounted to cheating.

1. Start small: copy and research

It started innocently enough. I asked Gemini to draft sharp promotional copy for upcoming Lerpoolian events and posed the odd convoluted research query. But the real transformation began when I turned it loose on our alumni records.

2. Turn CV entries into stories people want to read

Like most schools, we have a Wikipedia page peppered with former pupils whose deeds (and occasional misdeeds) have been chronicled online. Gemini accomplished two things that fundamentally changed my working week:

• It took dry, skeletal CV entries and wove them into vibrant, narrative features that people genuinely wanted to read.
• Far more importantly, it sifted through hundreds of disparate web pages in seconds — sparing me those grim, tea-cold hours of clicking through dead-end hyperlinks in search of a single elusive fact.

A word of caution: Always check your school's data protection policy before upload personal data about living alumni into public AI tools.

3. Mine your scanned school magazines

Then came the proper eureka moment. We have been working closely with SDS to build our digital archive, which integrates seamlessly into our ToucanTech platform. While we are fundraising to get the complete run of school magazines scanned and uploaded, a small initial batch is already live on the site.

I decided to test the water: I dragged a couple of raw PDF editions straight into Gemini and asked it to cross-reference the pupil lists against broader historical records to spot anyone who went on to notable careers. From just two years of scanned magazines, it unearthed four or five brilliant alumni profiles ready to be turned into bespoke feature articles.
 

4. Transcribe honours boards and shields from a photo

Encouraged, I pushed my luck. We had been toying with launching a school archive society to transcribe honours boards, cups and presentation shields. I took a high-resolution photograph of an old silver shield — tarnished silver, awkward reflections, ornate cursive engraving, the lot — and dropped the image into Gemini. It transcribed every single winner's name and date without breaking a sweat.
 

5. Solve the 360° trophy problem

Anyone who has tried cataloguing sports silver knows the unique irritation of the 360-degree engraving: the names wrap stubbornly around the curved circumference. SDS provides rotating video clips of these artefacts for our archive. Here's how I read them:
 

1. 1

   Capture

   Use a screen recorder (I use Snagit) to capture the cup completing one full revolution.

2. 2

   Upload

   Upload the MP4 straight into Gemini and ask for the engraved text.

3. 3

   Cross-reference

   Match the winners against magazine entries and your alumni records.

Seconds later, it produced a chronological transcript of every name and date etched around the bowl.

6. Make AI your co-editor

Gemini has become my silent co-editor inside ToucanTech's content management system. Rather than wrestling solely with the standard formatting toolbars, I've had Gemini hold my hand through writing bespoke HTML and CSS snippets to paste into our news templates. It sounds technical enough to bring on a mild migraine, but it's remarkably simple once you see the code in action - clean pull quotes, stylish breakout boxes and crisp layouts.

I even upload full scrolling screenshots of the finished page back into Gemini to ask for a critique on whitespace, visual balance and typography before hitting ‘Publish’.

ABOUT THE LERPOOLIANS

The Lerpoolians are a volunteer-led alumni association of Liverpool College, with 2,000+ online  member. Powered by ToucanTech and an SDS-sponsored digital archive.

Visit thelerpoolians.org.uk →