Save The Date **Transforming Audiovisual Collection Search in the Age of AI** Based on the Data Challenge “Let’s Make a Cinephile Search Tool!” [1] by the Data Competence Center HERMES, in cooperation with Digital Cinema-Hub and the NECS working group “Digital Methods” Dear colleagues, We are delighted to invite you to the pre-conference workshop of the NECS Conference 2026 on June 17, 2026, at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier (2pm to 6pm). The workshop will feature two sessions. In the first session, the three winning teams of HERMES’ data challenge will present the extraordinary tools they have developed for the multimodal search of audiovisual collections. They will discuss their results, their working processes, and the problems they tackled to achieve these impressive outcomes. In the second half of the workshop, we invite you to join a panel discussion on the current needs of audiovisual archives and collections, and how the newly developed tools can be implemented to meet those needs. We will conclude the workshop with drinks and nibbles, providing an opportunity to continue our discussions into the evening. As room capacity is limited, attendance will be restricted to registered participants. Please save the date and stay tuned for the detailed workshop program and registration link, which will be shared via the usual newsletters toward the end of April. We are very excited to honor the talented winners of the challenge and to welcome you to what promises to be an inspiring and engaging event. Organized by the data competence center HERMES (MCDCI, University of Marburg, funded by BMFTR) and the project Digital Cinema-Hub (Universities of Marburg, Mainz and Frankfurt, funded by VW-foundation), in cooperation with NECS working group „Digital Methods“. [1] https://hermes-hub.de/forschen/datachallenges/challenges/challenge-2025.html