Below are the slides from a presentation given by Zack Biro and Carol Smith of Christ Church Preservation Trust and Walt Rice of R&R Computer Solutions on November 13, 2026, at Exploring Moravian History and World Heritage (November 12–14, 2026).
A Demonstration of the Project’s Interactive AI Using Records from the First Moravian Church of Philadelphia
The talk traces how the Philadelphia Congregations Project grew from 41,000 planned scans to more than 142,000 pages from Philadelphia’s early congregations, and how AI has changed the archival work: transcriptions drafted by AI and checked by volunteers, AI-assisted descriptions of the records, and plain-language questions answered from the full text with citations to the pages. It closes with a demonstration using the records of the First Moravian Church of Philadelphia, held at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem.
Try it yourself
- The Moravian Philadelphia Atlas: the congregation’s diaries, registers and membership lists turned into linked records, with maps, timelines and a network of people. Every chart leads to a record, and every record to an original page.
- Ask the Archives: ask a question in plain language; it searches the transcriptions and answers with citations and links to the pages.