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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. 027 AI

      Whisper

      Speech-recognition model that transcribes oral history interviews and archival audio, with timestamps, in many languages.

      At a glance
      Maker
      OpenAI
      Released
      Sep 2022
      Licence
      Open source (MIT)
      Cost
      Free to run yourself; OpenAI API is paid
      Runs
      Your own machine (Python); OpenAI API
      Skill
      Some code
      Historian’s notes
      Where your sources go Run locally, audio never leaves your machine. The API sends it to OpenAI, where it may be kept up to 30 days.
      How it’s been tested 15.3% average word error across 1,847 Holocaust testimonies in seven languages (Fortunoff Archive, 2026).
      Known problems on historical sources Can invent whole sentences nobody said, especially around pauses. Mishears dialect and proper names. Always check against the recording.
      Used in research0

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

      Used to build corpora1
      Tested in2
      Guides2
      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