DeedDigest

Special collections live and die by donor restrictions, deeds of gift, and scattered correspondence—usually trapped in PDFs, email threads, and filing cabinets. DeedDigest is a web app with optional AI that ingests donor agreements and related documents, extracts key clauses (access restrictions, embargo dates, reproduction limits, credit lines, takedown terms, renewal triggers), and turns them into a structured “restriction profile” per collection. Staff can search across all collections for terms like “no digitization,” “permission required,” or “embargo until,” and generate a plain-language summary for reading room staff and researchers. It also creates a compliance checklist and alerts when embargoes expire or when a permission request is needed. This is not a magic legal tool: it flags uncertainty, links every extracted term back to the source page, and requires human approval before anything is treated as authoritative.