Digital Humanities Tools
There are hundreds of tools that have been used in DH projects. This list highlights some of the tools that we think will be most relevant to the SJSU community.
Is there a tool that you think others at SJSU should know about? Email nick.szydlowski@sjsu.edu to let us know about it!
Digital Exhibits and Web Hosting
When planning a web-based digital project, one of the first questions we ask is "where will this project live?" The best answer will depend on the goals and requirements of the project, and we are fortunate at SJSU to have a variety of options for project hosting.
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SJSU Digital Exhibits (Omeka S)SJSU Digital Exhibits is a shared platform where SJSU students, faculty, and staff can create digital scholarship and digital humanities projects related to research, pedagogy, or coursework. It is provided by SJSU King Library and runs on the Omeka S digital exhibit platform.
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WaxWax is an open source, minimal computing project for producing digital exhibitions focused on longevity, low costs, and flexibility. Wax is based on the popular static site generator Jekyll. King Library has used Wax for digital projects, and can provide consultation on Wax projects at SJSU.
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GitHub PagesGitHub Pages allows you to host a site directly from a GitHub repository for free. It is a great option for sites built with Wax or Jekyll, or coded by hand.
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New Art CityNew Art City is a virtual gallery & exhibition toolkit for digital art. You can use New Art City to create 3D virtual environments, and export the exhibits you build on the platform to standalone sites for sharing and archiving.
Specialized Tools
While the range of tools used in DH is wide and varied, the tools below have particularly strong support and adoption at SJSU.
Visualization, Mapping, and More
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ArcGIS, including ArcGIS StoryMapThe SJSU community has access to a powerful suite of mapping software from ArcGIS. DH practitioners may be particularly interested in ArcGIS StoryMaps, a tool that supports storytelling through maps.
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Knight Lab Tools, including StoryMapJS and TimelineJSA set of open source tools to facilitate online storytelling, maintained by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University. These tools are lightweight and relatively easy to incorporate into most websites. King Library has used StoryMapJS and TimelineJS in a variety of contexts, and is able to provide support for these tools.
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Adobe Creative Cloud - learn more at the Adobe Digital CaféThe SJSU community has access to a wide variety of tools and resources from Adobe, and the library provides training to get you started. Even if you've already settled on an approach for your project, you may find that tools like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Stock can help you produce the design elements you need to make your project look its best.
Text Analysis
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VoyantA simple, free tool that lets you try out several text analysis methods.
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Hathi Trust Research Center AnalyticsThis tools allows researchers to perform analysis on the 16 million volumes contained in the Hathi Trust Digital Library. Available to SJSU users - choose SJSU as your institution to sign in via SSO.
Podcasting and Audio Production
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AudacityAudacity is an open source tool for audio recording and production. It is particularly well-suited for podcasting, but can support music production as well.
Coding Tools and Langugages
Digital humanities projects can be a great way to pick up new tech skills. This list focuses on a few widely used, highly transferable coding skills, with enough information to help you figure out which skills will be relevant for your context.
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HTMLHyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language used to "mark up" text on the internet. HTML provides the semantic structure for webpages. While many tools allow you to create webpages without editing HTML directly, it can be a very helpful skill in a wide variety of contexts.
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MarkdownMarkdown is a simplified markup language which can be easier to learn than HTML. Markdown is used in some DH tools, including Wax, and is also the language used to edit Wikipedia.
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CSSCascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide information about how websites should look. They control the layout, typography, and appearance of each element on the page. In many contexts, knowing CSS will allow you to customize the look and feel of your project.
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JavaScriptJavaScript is a programming language that can run inside your web browser, and it is used to script user interactions on interactive websites. It is the most popular programming language in the world, and is used in a wide variety of DH contexts.
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PythonPython is another widely-used programming language. In contrast to JavaScript, Python scripts are typically run on a server or local computer, rather than in a web browser. This makes Python ideal for DH tasks that involve local data or text analysis, web scraping, or work with large language models or other machine learning tools.
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Git and GitHubGit is a very popular version control system, used to track changes to code and facilitate collaboration. GitHub provides tools that use Git, as well as the free hosting service GitHub Pages. Git, GitHub, and GitHub Pages are all widely used in DH projects.
Learn to Code
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LinkedIn LearningSJSU has partnered with LinkedIn Learning to provide online education for our students, faculty and staff. While the training is not specific to the DH context, this is a great resource to learn the technical skills needed to work with some DH tools.
More Tool Lists and Resources
While the lists above include the tools with the most support at SJSU, your project may require something different. The lists below offer other starting points, but feel free to reach out to nick.szydlowski@sjsu.edu if it would be helpful to talk through available tools and approaches for a specific project.
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Network Analysis ToolsPart of our research guide on Citation Network Analysis, this list includes free software for creating and analyzing network graphs.
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TAPoRThe Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPor) is a collection of tools for text analysis. Its curated lists can be helpful in identifying recommended tools for specific tasks.