How Revs Institute Is Reimagining the Future of Automotive History (Arthur Carlson)

This episode of The Logbook, our History of Motorsports Series features Arthur Carlson, Director of Archives and Research Operations at the Revs Institute, outlining a major expansion in automotive archival preservation and access. He describes Revs’ new, highly secure Archives and Research Center in Naples, Florida; the scale of its holdings (including the Revs Digital Library’s ~724,000 photos, plus extensive books, periodicals, film, audio, art, and automobilia); and plans for a high-end digitization lab and modular researcher workspace. Carlson explains partnerships using AI and machine learning for car and facial recognition to generate richer metadata across hundreds of thousands of images, plus an oral history initiative with the University of Kentucky leveraging transcription, translation, and linked data. He also details renewed digitization uploads, new acquisitions, returning internships, and a proposed consortium (“G.A.R.A.G.E.”) to create shared discovery and digitization standards across institutions.