Changing Technology, Evolving Narratives: Global Information Systems, Machine Learning, and Historical Research and Writing

More than ever, especially in the last decade, technology has played a critical part in historical research and writing. Global Information Systems (GIS) technology not only provides geographic information, but in the hands the of historians, has changed the way they approach and produce historical narratives; creating new contexts to explore and examine the spatial relationships between events and the narrative dialogue. As machine learning and artificial intelligence has become widely available and improving rapidly, historians can pair these tools and technology with GIS to improve discoverability of primary sources and provide access to studies after their completion. This intersection of GIS and technology is also evident as a means to provide inexperienced students and researchers in the in humanities the ability to explore these new historical methodologies through pilot projects, crowdsourcing, and other means of “democratizing data” in a decentralized fashion. This paper will discuss the use of GIS, experiments with machine learning technologies and data harvesting that were provided through innovative and cutting edges programs at the Library of Congress and how their results have changed the way researchers have approached, used, and presented historical sources and narratives.