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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. 101

      Old Bailey Online

      Searchable transcriptions of almost 200,000 trials at London’s central criminal court, 1674–1913, tagged for offences, verdicts and punishments, with page images.

      At a glance
      Holder
      Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield
      Launched
      2003 (v9: 2023)
      Coverage
      197,752 trials, 1674–1913, plus Ordinary’s Accounts
      Licence
      CC BY-NC 4.0
      Cost
      Free
      Access
      Website; open API (no key); bulk TEI-XML
      Historian’s notes
      How the text was made Typed by hand twice and compared, not OCR. Well over 99% accurate on clear pages.
      Known gaps and biases The Proceedings were a commercial publication shaped by shorthand writers and publishers, not an official record. Offence categories are modern. Search both “s” and “f” spellings before 1807.
      What you can do with it Free for research, including topic modelling and NER. Commercial use, including AI training, needs a licence.
      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