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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 I

    AI & History

    Machine learning, vision-language models and speech models. Every card here carries notes on where your sources go, how it was tested, and how it fails.

    Guide cards

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

    • tool · No. 015 AI

      eScriptorium

      Open-source web platform for transcribing historical manuscripts and print: segment pages, run or train models, correct and export. Strong on Hebrew, Arabic and other non-Latin scripts.

      At a glance
      Maker
      EPHE–PSL, Paris
      Released
      2018–19
      Licence
      Open source (MIT)
      Cost
      Free; self-host or use an institution’s server
      Runs
      Web app on a self-hosted or institutional server
      Skill
      No code to use; IT help to install
      Historian’s notes
      Where your sources go No central cloud. Your sources stay on whichever server hosts it.
      How it’s been tested Error rates of 2.8–8.9% on medieval Hebrew manuscripts (Tikkoun Sofrim, DH2019).
      Known problems on historical sources Needs a good amount of consistent training data. Reading order fails on complex layouts. Vertical scripts are not supported.
      Used in research0

      No published research uses found yet. Using it in a project? Tell us.

      Used to build corpora2
      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