LibGuides: Digital Humanities Guide: Tools &amp; Methods

About Tools

This page includes tools that support digital scholarship in the humanities. These tools are open-source and assist with text, spatial, network, and image analysis. You can generate timelines, maps, digital exhibits, websites, and visualizations.

If you have questions about this guide or digital humanities, please email the Humanities Librarian, Jenn Masunaga at jmasuna@calstatela.edu

Timelines

Knightlab Timeline
Knightlab's Timeline is an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually rich, interactive timelines. Beginners can create a timeline using nothing more than a Google spreadsheet. Timeline walks users through the steps when you sign up.

Creating Timelines with Knightlab
by Kendall Faulkner Last Updated Jan 17, 2024 1275 views this year

Tiki-Toki
Tiki-Toki's free account lets you create a fully-functional timeline that you can share with friends and colleagues. Visually stunning timelines.

Text Analysis

Voyant
Discover trends, patterns, and sentiments in texts. Voyant Tools is a web-based reading and analysis environment for digital texts. Enter URLs, PDFs, excel files, or paste text. Multilingual tool.

Getting Started with Voyant

Juxta
Juxta is an open-source tool for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single textual work. Originally designed to aid scholars and editors examine the history of a text from manuscript to print versions, Juxta offers a number of possibilities for humanities computing and textual scholarship.

HathiTrust
supports large-scale computational analysis of the works in the HathiTrust Digital Library to facilitate non-profit and educational research.

Network Analysis

Onodo
Open web platform allowing users to create visual networks to tell a story about characters, relationships, and much more. Free and easy to use. No download required.
Gephi
Gephi is an open-source network analysis and visualization software package written in Java on the NetBeans platform. Requires download and is more challenging to use.

Data Visualization

RAWGraphs
A web browser tool for turning spreadsheet data into a range of data visualizations without needing to know any code.

Mapping

StoryMapJS
StoryMapJS is a free tool to help you tell stories on the web that highlight the locations of a series of events.
MyMaps (Google)
Add customized pins anywhere to Google maps, and create relationships/paths between pins. Add custom images and import spreadsheets to create maps. Maps can be created individually or collaboratively, and can be easily embedded into web pages and blogs.
MapHub
Create maps and import images or excel files.
Historypin
Historypin is a place for people to share photos and stories,
telling the histories of their local communities. See examples of mapping projects on the website.

Creating Maps with HistoryPin
by Kendall Faulkner Last Updated Feb 21, 2024 206 views this year

Digital Exhibits

Omeka
A web-publishing platform allowing anyone with an account to create or collaborate on a website. Publish a website to share digital files or collections, and create media-rich online exhibits.
Scalar
Users can assemble media from multiple sources and juxtapose them with their own writing in a variety of ways. Minimal technical expertise required.
Historypin
Historypin is a place for people to share photos and stories,
telling the histories of their local communities. See examples of mapping projects on the website.

Websites

Weebly
Create simple websites for free. Just click "Start Now" and sign-up for free. Then select a theme and start editing. If you are prompted to register a domain, exit out of the window. You do not need to pay for a domain. When you publish your site, you will have the option to use a free domain!
Highly recommended. Reasons: Ease of use; free; embed Timelines into web pages.
Wordpress
Free options for generating a website or blog, in which you can add content, images, and embed other materials.
Example: Weebly: Victorian Lit Website
Sample Weebly website created for free.
Wix

Posters & Infographics

Canva
Use Canva for free to access templates and create infographics, posters, flyers, and presentations.
Piktochart
Create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. Graphic design platform with a free version.

Example: Canva
Infographic created with Canva.

Quiz Makers

Kahoot!
Kahoot! allows you to build quizzes for free. Before you start a topic or course, host a quiz to assess current level of knowledge, identify gaps and adjust your plan accordingly. (Kahoot!)
Google Forms
Create quizzes with multiple choice, short answer, checkbox, and likert scale options. View results by individual, summary, or question.
Socrative
Get instant insight into student learning with easy-to-create quizzes, polls, exit tickets and more! (Socrative)

Presentation Slides

SlidesCarnival
Free PPT templates and Google Slides themes for your presentations. (SlidesCarnival)
SlidesGo

WhiteBoards

Padlet
Make boards, documents, and webpages that are easy to read and fun to contribute to.

Search More Tools

Tapor Directory of Tools
A directory of over 1,500 tools for studying texts.