Local Historian

Company profile

Local Historian company profile

Local Historian is an AI-powered civic technology platform that transforms how small and mid-sized towns manage and share their public records. The platform's Civic Assistant enables residents and staff to search years of public meeting recordings using natural language questions, with AI-generated answers that link directly to timestamped moments in the original video. This dramatically reduces FOIL/FOIA response times, cuts staff overtime, and makes local government more accessible to every resident. Beyond civic records, Local Historian offers a Heritage Layer for preserving oral histories, connecting community voices to searchable, AI-enhanced archives. The platform also provides digitization services for legacy media—cassette tapes, VHS, DVDs—transforming fragile local history into permanent, discoverable digital assets. Founded by Alex Hayes, Local Historian is currently piloting in Glen Cove, NY, and partnering with libraries and historical societies across New York State. The platform is built on modern AI infrastructure including semantic search, automatic transcription with punctuation, and professional audio restoration. Local Historian serves town clerks, municipal staff, residents, libraries, historical societies, and schools—anyone who needs to find, understand, or preserve local history.