IGBIS is very pleased to welcome Niklas Zimmer as the guest speaker for our next webinar.

On Thursday, 1st August, Niklas will be presenting on the transformative potential of document process automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in data extraction and metadata creation. He will highlight the systemic inefficiencies caused by manual data handling and propose AI-driven solutions to enhance accuracy, efficiency, and accessibility within digital library collections. This session will not only discuss but also demonstrate the practical applications and benefits of using automation tools for intelligent document processing. These benefits include improved success rate of digitisation project outcomes, such as data validation and metadata creation efficiencies. Attendees will gain insights into leveraging AI to streamline workflows, reduce human error, and achieve significant returns on investment, paving the way for more integrated and resilient digital archives, collections and libraries.

Niklas Zimmer is the Digital Scholarship and Data Curation Manager at FCTEC, a leading African provider of hardware, software and services for digitisation and digital transformation. Niklas lives and works in Cape Town, where he completed an Honours degree in Fine Art in 1998 and a research MA(FA) in 2012 at the University of Cape Town (UCT). In 2005, he completed a BA in education at the University of Cologne.

Niklas worked for three years as an art teacher, heading the Visual Arts Department at the German International School in Cape Town until 2008. Since then, he worked as an audio specialist at the UCT Centre for Popular Memory until 2015 and was manager of the UCT Libraries' Digital Library Services department for over seven years until 2023.