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AI ARCHIVIST
Creating digital database that is ‘a boon for public domain’
BY POET WOLFE Staff writer
Joseph Makkos will tell you himself
— he’s not a rich man.
At first glance, his studio in New Orleans’ Central City is inconspicuous. It’s slender and two stories high with an auburn façade, squeezed between other flat-roofed buildings on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. Two window displays leading to the front door bear the patina of a collector’s space, showcasing rows of typewriters. Makkos, in a navy blazer and pigtails topped with a beige Tom Waitsstyle pork pie hat, opened the door to his studio on a recent, sunny Tuesday morning During the tour he walked past a printing press and tables littered with intaglio stamps. Manila papers are buried in red-capped tubes and garbage bags are scattered everywhere. Since 2013, Makkos has preserved tens of thousands of New Orleans newspapers, including The TimesPicayune — papers that date from 1888 to 1929. The papers were at one point owned by the British Museum, where they survived a Nazi bombing. After a shift in ownership, Makkos found the archives being offered on Craigslist for free.
The enigmatic Ohio native has a long-standing kinship with print media and history On YouTube, Makkos, 16 years younger, reads a poem assembled from a 1963 article while standing by a Royal typewriter at an open mic. For five years, he’s made use of his collection of over 20,000 records by DJ-ing throughout the U.S. and the United Kingdom. His stage name, “The Archivist,” comes as no surprise.
Makkos is rich rich with historic knowledge that the rest of New Orleans lacks. But he isn’t gatekeeping it. For years, he and his team of creatives, including collaborator Beau Ross and technology advisory Chris Galliano, have been working on an ambitious project that involves using artificial intelligence to create accurate depictions of New Orleans’ past. Makkos says the interactive database in the works is expected to be available in an app format that allows users to experience the city’s history,
“There’s all these insane things that essentially just have been kept from us due to technological degradation.”
JOSEPH MAKKOS, archivist
including tours, AI videos and highresolution photos.
The archivist believes the general ways history is taught limits the subject matter’s possibilities.
“We read books. We hear podcasts. We watch YouTube videos. We watch movies, and you can go on a tour,” Makkos said.
In fact, tourists stagger through the French Quarter every day, searching for a tour guide to chronicle the Lalaurie Mansion, Pirate’s Alley and Hotel Monteleone. Makkos noted that these walking tours can at times be in pursuit of entertaining visitors rather than sharing accurate accounts of the famous neighborhood’s past.
His project will offer interactive tours based on archives and historical books. Without giving away too much detail before its launch, with certain features slated to come out by the end of the year, Makkos characterized the tour as a Pokémon Goesque feature in the immersive database.
Searching through other websites that provide online archives, like NewsBank and Newspapers by Ancestry, involves inputting keywords, dates and locations that match the descriptions of an article. Makkos’ says
this database will work at a more rapid pace, answering users’ questions about New Orleans history with a model that’s similar to AI chatbots Grok and ChatGBT
Finding the answers to questions relating to history wasn’t always this easy Creative works including newspapers, published between 1923 and 1977 were not in the public domain after Congress extended its copyright protection in 1998, according to Duke University They became accessible in the public domain again in 2019.
“We are scanning at high res, and that’s like a boon for public domain,” Makkos said. “Because it’s like a whole new paradigm to that old information.”
Makkos owns a German-made scanner that produces crisp and ornate photographs of newspapers compared to the pixelated, microfilmed ones that appear on NewsBank.
In the 1950s and 60s, microfilm companies rose to fame, offering to take collections from institutions and capture microphotographs of the archives. But some of history was erased during this process, with microfilmers unintentionally cutting off sections of articles. They also used 50 ISO, a black-and-white film, Makkos said, even though color started appearing in newspapers in 1913.
“There’s all these insane things that essentially just have been kept from us due to technological degradation,”
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Balancing the mental load
In the last few months, both of my 20-something daughters have initiated conversations that included the four magic words a mother waits for: “You were right, Mom.”
They are in the early throes of figuring out adulting — and the energy it requires.
They’ve discovered and discussed the shock of paying bills and making sure their cupboards and cabinets are stocked with all the things: enough food vs. too much food, clean sheets, a working vacuum, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, shampoo, salt and the list goes on and on.
One thing that they will both admit is that their grocery shopping experiences go a little differently now that they are paying the tab.
Our older daughter is rather quiet. At 23, Piper, our youngest, is the opposite of quiet. She is processing her adulthood transition by talking it through. Piper graduated from LSU last spring and joined Teach for America. She accepted a position teaching 11th grade math in Denver and moved there last summer She calls me almost every afternoon on her 25-minute drive home, and I get a synopsis of her day I consider the fact that we are having the conversations as a win.
In those daily calls, I’ve listened to her process her move across the country, the responsibilities of starting a new job, figuring out health care, paying rent and making a car payment. So much new stuff at once has been a shock to her system — not to mention her teaching 70 17-year-old students about trigonometric functions, quadratics, statistics/probability and more. She and I have talked about what it means to “bear the mental load” of life in general and in a classroom — to be the one who has to recognize and initiate all the things need to happen, along with the energy required to keep track of it all.
At 23, she is working to keep things in perspective, but she says “struggle” is a good word to describe some of her life these days. Getting to know her students and learning details of their lives has been humbling.
Most days on her drive home she admits that she’s so worn out that all she wants to do is stay home and rest. She has realized the need to find a balance between pouring into her students, emotionally and academically, versus taking care of herself a tricky tightrope walk, to be sure.
“The process of recognizing the comfort my own life has been interesting,” she said.
“Even with the difficulties I face, I’ve just never had to go through the challenges that a lot of the students I’m working with experience on a daily basis.”
As she’s approaching the last few months of her first year of teaching, she recommends that all adults try teaching, even if it’s only a year
“Being humbled is a good thing,” she said. “One year of teaching really does the trick. This is an experience that sticks.”
She remembers that I tried to warn her
“You told me that I wasn’t going to understand how difficult teaching is,” she said. “You
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STAFF PHOTOS BY CHRIS GRANGER
Archivist Joseph Makkos recently sorts through his extensive collection of old Times-Picayune newspapers.
Carnival coverage headlines on original Times-Picayune newspapers from 1925 are kept in an archive.
Using special skills to find purpose providing haircuts
In Baton Rouge, speech therapist meets ‘clients where they are’
BY JOY HOLDEN Staff writer
Madeline Johnson holds two licenses that often do not go hand in hand — speech therapy and barbering.
Johnson worked at a beauty salon in high school as an assistant, which allowed her to be around one of her passions: hair She also spent time working with a young boy with Down syndrome and developed her other passion: helping people with special needs.
While attending LSU for undergrad and graduate school for speech language pathology, Johnson was also working on her barber apprenticeship. She took the state barber board exam around the same time she graduated with her master’s degree.
This year, Johnson opened her own haircutting service for individuals with special needs, Miss Madeline’s, with a vision to provide sensoryfriendly haircuts. Johnson started her service on Sundays operating out of the Bluebonnet Blvd. Salon du Sud and calling the sessions Sensory Sundays. She believes that every person deserves dignity while getting a haircut.
When did your vision for Miss Madeline’s come to you, and how did it evolve?
A lot of my patients throughout grad school and my fellowship year talked about how it’s really hard for the kids to complete activities of daily living. And a haircut is definitely one of those things.
Every single person has some sort of hairstyle, so it’s important to me that everyone gets to feel like they can express themselves with their hair.
How long have you been doing this and what are your plans for 2025?
I started in January The support from Baton Rouge has been outrageous. I expected the special needs community to care about it, but I did not expect the greater Baton Rouge area to care about it as much as they did. It feels like everyone in town has contributed something to this project
Everybody is just outpouring support. I’ve had lawyers help me with my LLC It’s just touching a lot of people, and I’m really grateful for that. It feels like everyone in town has contributed something to this project.
Salon du Sud was hosting me for Sensory Sundays. They had a really great room that was plain and pretty and very neutral, which is important for the whole sensory component of what I’m doing. I really planned on doing just that for a while, but then the wait list was filled out until the end of April Parents were calling, and I was telling them that it’s three months out.
I decided to start looking around. Then Aaron Hogan, who has Eye Wander photography studio, has a little suite behind his studio that I’m going to share. I’m going to start there on April 1, alternating Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. Then on Fridays, I go into schools, clinics, hospitals, and I cut hair on site.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I plan to do contract speech therapy work — so I’ll still be a speech therapist to keep my skills up and everything. What are some features of compassionate sensory haircuts that make them unique?
You have to keep in mind
the entire sensory system visual, auditory, touch, smell, taste, all of it. A typical hair salon is really over stimulating. With the visual component, my salon space is going to be very neutral. It’s not being marketed as a kid’s hair salon. There are no bright colors. There are no rocket ship chairs. I’ll have sensory toys like Pop Its, toys with different textures, weighted items and vibrating items.
The tactile component of a haircut is really intense. I’ve learned a lot of information about proprioception, which is a sense that lets us perceive the location and movements of our body parts, and how anyone with sensory differences likes to be touched. They like to be warned when they’re about to be touched.
I have a lot of deep pressure techniques that I use Before I go in with the clippers, I’ll press down with my hand close to where it’s going to be. We count to three, I do it for two seconds, and then we stop. We kind of create this pattern so that they are aware and can bring attention to that part of their body I don’t ever want to shock their nervous system, and these are things that I learned in speech therapy We talk about it, and I let them play with the items beforehand. Patience is a huge key I always book the appointments to be an hour
A lot of the parents with kids in wheelchairs have been really grateful because I understand my way around a wheelchair I am not afraid to get in there. I’ve had some parents tell me that different salons were almost scared to touch the kids and their big wheelchairs because they just had never seen it before. The parents feel comforted that I am, first and foremost, a health care professional,
and I happen to also be a bar-
ber What do you want parents and guardians who have children with special needs,or family members with special needs, to know?
I want them to know that they don’t have to make excuses for their child and they don’t have to apologize for what their child needs
Even adults with special needs, too.
Adults with sensory differences, or anybody with sensory differences, do not have to explain away anything. I understand it. I feel like I can meet them where they are. I don’t want anyone to feel embarrassed about anything that they might need.
Was this attention to sensory needs something that you were trained in with speech therapy, or has this been something you’ve studied on your own?
All speech therapists learn about sensory differences, but the place where I did my fellowship year and clinical experience, I did a lot of cotreating with occupational therapists — which really solidified
Meet America’s Favorite Fisherman at the Louisiana Sportsman Show.JimmyHoustonhad such agood time at the2024 Show,thatheis returningin2025. Jimmyand his boatwill
PROVIDED PHOTO
Madeline Johnson, a licensed speech therapist and licensed barber, cuts the hair of her client, Dylan Simoneaux.
DATABASE
he explained.
The photographs and texts of newspapers will not only be of higher quality on his program, but AI will breathe life into them.
“Those people can be winking at you and smiling at you,” Makkos marveled while describing the potential to humanize archives.
The project comes during a rise in concern for the use of AI, with workplaces alarmed that such vigorous techn ology threatens to replace careers. A study by Goldman Sachs in December 2024 found that only 6.1% of American companies are using AI to produce their services.
On a nationwide scale, more are learning to adapt to the digital age in 2025, with mass media corporations like The New York Times and The Guardian recently embracing AI by using it as a tool rather than a takeover In Louisiana, researchers are studying it with the launch of the $50 million Louisiana Growth Fund and the Louisiana Institute for Artificial Intelligence in February Makkos is embracing AI like many Yet some Gen Z-ers want to experience what technology took away from them. Rather than reaching for their iPhones to snap a picture, they are clearing store shelves filled with digital cameras. The crackle of spinning records and the distinctive hiss of a running cassette tape have made a comeback in the past year Makkos’ database emerg-
RISHER
Continued from page 1G
Continued from page 1G were right. I had absolutely no clue.” Aside from teaching, she is facing the big things and the little things — like learning what a different kind of winter feels like, how to drive in a much bigger city in wintry conditions. Overall, she describes her transition into adulthood as “bittersweet.”
“I think it’s all been a good thing, but it’s kind of bittersweet,” she said. As she’s observing her students every day and trying to figure out what makes them tick and how to motivate them to do the right thing, she says she’s had a lot of time for self reflection.
“I spend a lot of time analyzing 17-year-old’s behaviors,” she said. “I’m turning that back on myself — looking at some of my past behaviors and asking how am I going to improve some of those behaviors. I’ve realized the importance of letting go of the parts of yourself that don’t represent the best of who you are.”
Email Jan Risher at jan. risher@theadvocate.com.
es at a time when some in the younger generation want the old and not the new
“They want authenticity,” Makkos said “They want something real, something tangible, something that’s rooted in a real thing.”
Email Poet Wolfe at poet. wolfe@theadvocate.com.
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Archivist Joseph Makkos prepares some of his original Times-Picayune newspapers from the early 1900s.
STAFF PHOTOS BY CHRIS GRANGER
Archivist Joseph Makkos scans an original Times-Picayune newspaper from 1898.
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