Finding the right combination of tools and platforms is a strategic challenge for developing digital projects, and requires careful research and thought. The best procedure is to consult with others already involved in projects similar to your own. There are also digital humanities outreach centers in the U.S. and Canada that can provide information on best practices and current developments in the field. These include the Center for Digital Humanities (Princeton), Editing Modernism in Canada (Dalhousie), and the Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown).
Conferences and training sessions such as the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (Victoria), Digital Humanities Winter Institute (Maryland), and THATCamp have sessions on various tools, and are a good opportunity to talk with others about them.The ProfHacker blog occasionally publishes essays on particular tools.
Thanks for the following collection of links are due to Jeff McKlurken of the University of Mary Washington.
General resources
- Digital Research Tools guide — http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/ Organized around what you want to do.
- Common Craft Videos — Great introduction to almost any topic http://www.commoncraft.com/videos
- Blog post listing new media and Digital Humanities resources — http://earlyamericanists.com/2013/04/22/the-future-of-the-past-is-now-digital-humanities-resource-guide/
Research/bibliographic tools
- Zotero.org — collect, organize and share research sources
Stanford’s Zotero Quick Start Guide: http://www.stanford.edu/group/cubberley/services/zotero
Zotero’s Quick Start Guide: http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
Beginner’s Guide to Zotero: http://www.slideshare.net/giustinid/beginners-guide-to-zotero
Teaching with Zotero
Post on using Zotero in a senior undergraduate history seminar by one of the designers: http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/08/07/teaching-with-zotero-groups-or-eating-my-own-dog-food-part-1/
Brief assignment with Zotero for a digital studies course: http://silverinsf.blogspot.com/2009/04/zotero-project.html
ProfHacker articles on Zotero
Group Library for McKlurken’s History of the Information Age course — https://www.zotero.org/groups/infoage/items
Collaboration tools
- Google Docs/Drive — drive.google.com
ProfHacker has a number of articles on teaching with Google Docs
Michael Wesch’s class uses Google Docs as part of larger project. http://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o
- Wikis
Dickinson College Wikis (Mediawiki)
wikispaces.com
PBworks.com — https://plans.pbworks.com/signup/basic20 (for free account)
MediaWiki — http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
McKlurken’s MediaWiki site — mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/
MediaWiki in WordPress installation — umwblogs.org/wiki
- VoiceThread
Used to analyze photographs — http://voicethread.com/#q.b52468.i273178
Used in online class to build community — http://voicethread.com/about/library/Using_VoiceThread_in_an_online_course_from_Professor_Russ_Meade/
EDUCAUSE resource on VoiceThread– http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7050.pdf
Voicethread list of educational uses — http://voicethread.com/about/library/
UMW’s VoiceThread Tutorial — http://umwblogs.org/wiki/index.php/Voice_Thread_Tutorial
- Skype
Skype.com
Example of using Skype to teach World Regional Geography — GEOG all over the world
- Google Hangouts — From plus.google.com.
GradHacker column about using Hangouts for teaching
- Basecamp — project management tools — http://basecamp.com/ [Not free]
Data Visualization and Analysis tools
- Wordle–word clouds http://www.wordle.net/
- Voyant Tools (previously known as Voyeur) — Text analysis tool (if Wordle took itself seriously) — http://voyant-tools.org/ and http://hermeneuti.ca/voyeur
Voyant/Voyeur Quick Start Guide: http://hermeneuti.ca/voyeur/users
- Mallet –Tools to analyze text, including topic modeling — http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/
Example — Rob Nelson’s analysis of Daily Dispatch in Richmond during the Civil War — http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/
Megan R. Brett in Journal of Digital Humanities on “Topic Modeling: A Basic Introduction”
- Paper Machines–to analyze Zotero materials (even topic modeling) — http://papermachines.org/
Lincoln Mullen’s ProfHacker piece on it: https://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/paper-machines-visualizes-your-zotero-library/44056
Social network analysis tools
- Gephi — networking
- Prosop — tool for analyzing social networks (in development)
- Social Networks and Archival Context Project — http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/search
Timelines
- MIT Simile Timeline — http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/
Tutorial: http://briancroxall.net/TimelineTutorial/TimelineTutorial.html
Student created-examples
History of the Information Age: http://infoagetimeline.umwblogs.org/
If you run WordPress, there is actually a plug-in for Simile Timeline
- Timeline JS — http://timeline.verite.co/
Amy Cavender’s ProfHacker piece on using Timeline JS: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/easy-timelines-with-timeline-js/46965
Taiping Civil War Timeline (student project) — http://taipingcivilwar.org/timeline/
Video/audio resources for class (and for posting videos)
- Youtube http://www.youtube.com/education
- Vimeo vimeo.com
- TEDTalks — http://www.ted.com/talks
- Internet Archive — Archive.org
- Soundcloud — For posting and sharing audio clips
Multimedia editing — emphasis on free/cheap
- Basic video editing — iMovie, Windows Live Movie Maker
- Basic image editing — GIMP, Picasa (Education usage), iPhoto
- Basic audio editing — Audacity
- Paid audio editing tools — Garageband (Mac), Cubase (Mac/PC)
- Lifehacker piece on assembling a free/cheap version of Adobe’s tools — http://lifehacker.com/5976725/build-your-own-adobe-creative-suite-with-free-and-cheap-software
- Digital Storytelling class guide to assembling a set of digital creation and editing tools — http://ds106.us/handbook/tools/
Social Media
- List of people on Twitter who are Digital humanists — https://twitter.com/#!/dancohen/digitalhumanities
- Google+ — plus.google.com
- Instagram — smartphone photo sharing app
Museums are highlighting their collections/building community with Pinterest — http://www.complex.com/art-design/2012/04/the-top-10-museums-on-pinterest#4
Indianapolis Museum of Art. — http://pinterest.com/imamuseum/
Example: Krystyn Moon’s American Consumerism class — http://pinterest.com/stephanietipple/american-consumerism/ & http://pinterest.com/stephanietipple/american-consumerism-end-of-semester/
History Methods class — http://pinterest.com/libbyhenry/history/
Social Media Curation Tools
- Tumblr — microblogging platform allowing for quick fluid posting of media and short text items.
Sue Fernsebner’s Tumblr on East Asia “Gulou” on list of featured news sites http://www.tumblr.com/spotlight/news
Storify used to describe process of and reaction to student-created Twitter Hate Map — http://storify.com/cbccommunity/twitter-hate-map
Storify collection of tweets for definitions of “the digital” — http://mcclurken.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-do-we-call-that-digital-thing-that.html
Chris Francese 1/13/14