A new Smithsonian and Library of Congress project is using artificial intelligence to help researchers connect objects and documents from the Revolutionary era.

The project, called Revolution Crossroads, brings together museum objects, newspapers, letters, military records and other archival materials that have been kept in separate collections.

Researchers are studying records from 1770 to 1810, a period that includes the American Revolution and the early years of the United States. The goal is to help people find links across collections that can reveal more about everyday life and the communities being formed.

One early example involved a silver creamer held by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Researchers connected it with newspaper advertisements placed around 1774 by a silversmith.

The Associated Press reported that the team has identified about 10,000 objects connected to people who lived during the period. Digitizing the records makes them easier to search and compare across institutions.

The Library of Congress says its partnership with the Smithsonian is intended to test how AI can help surface patterns and open new ways to explore historical collections. The project also makes some of its data and search tools available to the public.

AI is being used to locate possible connections, but historians and curators still need to check what the machine finds. The Library of Congress cautions that AI-generated text and identifications can contain errors and should be checked against original records.

The effort could help bring attention to people whose names do not appear as often in familiar accounts of the Revolution. Researchers hope that connecting records will make it easier to reconstruct lives and communities beyond the best-known political leaders.

Sources: Associated Press reporting, the Smithsonian’s Revolution Crossroads project, and the Library of Congress project overview.