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 visualizes literary networks and Geography of the Post visualizes the spread of the US Postal Service in the nineteenth century.
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 is a database created from a nineteenth-century Puget Sound Customs District ledger and 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.
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