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The Digital Historian’s Toolbox

Preview · 19 tools · 6 datasets · 75 projects · seeded October 2026

The tools and datasets historians actually used, and where.

Pull out a drawer to see what’s filed inside. Every card separates research that used a tool from the benchmarks that tested it.

  1. Mistral OCR (2 uses)
  2. World Historical Gazetteer (1 use)
  3. Gephi (1 use)
  4. Voyant Tools (1 use)
  5. eScriptorium (1 use)

Research + corpus-building uses. Benchmarks don’t count.

The drawers

A tool can be filed in more than one drawer
  • DRAWER VIII

    Public Datasets

    Open corpora and collections others have built and shared. Each card says how the text was made and what you’re allowed to do with it.

    Guide cards

    Counts research and corpus-building uses in the window, plus “I’m using this now” check-ins. Benchmarks don’t count.

    • dataset · No. 102

      Chronicling America

      Library of Congress collection of millions of digitised US newspaper pages up to 1963, with freely downloadable OCR text. The default corpus for large-scale work on American newspapers.

      At a glance
      Holder
      Library of Congress and NEH
      Launched
      2007
      Coverage
      US newspapers to 1963; about 24 million pages
      Licence
      Mostly public domain
      Cost
      Free
      Access
      Website; JSON API (no key); bulk OCR batches
      Historian’s notes
      How the text was made Uncorrected OCR, mostly from microfilm. One estimate puts word error above 25%.
      Known gaps and biases Coverage depends on which states took part and what each chose to digitise. Columns, headlines and ads are often scrambled together.
      What you can do with it Older issues are public domain; later ones may contain copyrighted material.
      Used in research2
      Used to build corpora1
      Tested in1
      Visit website
      Add a project that used it See it on the network Suggest a correction

      Nobody has said they’re using it in 2026 yet. “I’m using this now” asks you to sign in with ORCID. One count per person per year; it adds to Trending, and names are never shown.

      Last updated 14 Oct 2026 Not yet reviewed by the editors · Version history