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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 VII

    Mapping & GIS

    Historical places, boundaries and movement on maps.

    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. 081

      StoryMap JS

      Free browser tool for slide-by-slide stories tied to points on a map. Its “gigapixel” mode lets you annotate one large image, such as a scanned historical map.

      At a glance
      Maker
      Northwestern University Knight Lab
      Released
      2013
      Licence
      Open source (MIT)
      Cost
      Free
      Runs
      Web browser (Google sign-in)
      Skill
      No code
      Historian’s notes
      Where your sources go Hosted by Knight Lab and needs a Google account. Historical map images must be tiled and hosted by you.
      How it’s been tested Reviewed for teachers on World History Commons. No published research evaluations found.
      Known problems on historical sources Modern basemaps only, unless you host your own map image; Google Drive image hosting no longer works. Slow development: two releases since late 2023.
      Used in research2
      Used to build corpora1
      Tested in0

      No published evaluations found yet.

      Guides1
      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