# Humanities & Data

While data-oriented scholarship is perhaps more often associated with the sciences and social sciences, it has as much purpose and relevance in the humanities. 

**Data visualization** can be used to illustrate social networks, how information spreads over time and place, historical, literary, and intellectual trends, and much more. The [*Belfast Group Poetry*](https://belfastgroup.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/) visualizes literary networks and [*Geography of the Post*](http://cameronblevins.org/gotp/) visualizes the spread of the US Postal Service in the nineteenth century. 

{% embed url="<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Q2olSSk4Y>" %}
About Geography of the Post
{% endembed %}

**Database creation** also makes up a considerable amount of humanities data-related scholarship. Such databases often incorperate primary sources and facilitate the asking and answering of research questions. [*They Came on Waves of Ink*](https://seanfraga.com/wavesofink/) is a database created from a nineteenth-century Puget Sound Customs District ledger and [*Enslaved.org*](https://enslaved.org/), a highly collaborative and grant-funded project, is a database created from slavery-related records provided by different archives and datasets from existing projects like [*Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database*](https://www.slavevoyages.org/).

{% embed url="<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia5TNi7uWnw>" %}
About Enslaved.org
{% endembed %}

![Visualization created in Enslaved.org](https://1449868658-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MRQTcbFY8LmyitpJ2uH%2F-MZJIuIz2glPPzSvCX1h%2F-MZJJKA27tdf1vrwN7Eu%2Fenslaved_visualization.png?alt=media\&token=49f33243-9aec-4c35-b200-e259d561cb23)