Using Data In the Classroom: Textual, Image and Other Datasets

Provides tips and sources for incorporating data into classroom discussions and assignments.

Library Data Services

Library Data Services caters to researchers interested in working with data, mapping, texts, visualization, and technology. Many of these services are available online. Davis Library Data Services, located on the second floor of Davis Library, offers:

A computing lab with specialized software for GIS and data visualization & analysis.
Walk-in assistance provided by knowledgeable student consultants during set hours.
Consultations with specialists for more in-depth inquiries (by appointment).
Spaces for collaboration and presentation, complete with white boards and external displays.
Technology short courses and programs that promote digital scholarship.

Please Note

Some of the resources below restrict scraping and/or mining. Violating the publishers' terms of use may result in database access being cut off. Please ask your subject librarian or the Data Librarian for assistance in gaining access to large amounts of data. (See also the Libraries' Text & Data Mining guide.)

On This Page:

Datasets for UNC Researchers
Openly Available Tools or Sources
Tools
Toolboxes

Datasets for UNC Researchers

Some of these resources are available to any institution that subscribes.

ARTstor
A digital library of over 2 million images and media files covering the arts, architecture, humanities, social sciences, and sciences with tools for teaching, research and study. See ARTstor's complete list of available collections. Anyone can browse ARTstor collections using a computer on UNC campus. In order to view full size images and download or save content, however, you must first register for an ARTstor user account. For more information, see the library's ARTstor guide.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users. Users must register for a free ARTstor account in order to view full size images and download or save content.
JSTOR
See JSTOR's Data for Research (https://www.jstor.org/dfr/, or linked under Tools) to create a custom dataset or download a sample one.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: Varies. Excludes most recent 2-5 years of currently available journals.

Openly Available Tools or Sources

Chronicling America API
API to access to historic U.S. newspaper pages from 1789-1963, digitized and made available by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Congressional hearings corpus by United States Congress
Coverage dates: 1823-2005
File organization: Separate files for each Congress, from the 18th Congress to the 108th. Also available as files for groups of years (1823-1941 [18th to 76th Congress]; then approximately by decade after that, such as 1941-1951 [77th to 81st Congress]; 1951-1961 [82nd to 86th Congress]; etc.). Files are large. Access through code (e.g., R or Python) or specialized programs (e.g., Voyant) is recommended.
**Note: non-UNC researchers would need to be on UNC's campus to access these files.
Congressional Record corpus by United States Congress
Coverage dates: 1789-1995
File organization: Separate files for each Congress, from the 1st Congress to the 105th. Also available as files for groups of years (1789-1941 [1st to 76th Congress]; then approximately by decade after that, such as 1941-1951 [77th to 81st Congress]; 1951-1961 [82nd to 86th Congress]; etc.). Files are large. Access through code (e.g., R or Python) or specialized programs (e.g., Voyant) is recommended.
**Note: non-UNC researchers would need to be on UNC's campus to access these files.

El Corpus del Espanol
Openly available. Compiled by linguist Mark Davies, this page offers several corpora: historical, online (web) dialects, news on the web, and more. Available for classroom use (UNC also has the research-only version.)
Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts
A research environment in which the 13th-century narrative of the Rose and the works of late 14th/early 15th-century author, Christine de Pizan, can be explored in their manuscript context.
English Corpora
Openly available. Page indexing widely used English-language corpora, many compiled by linguist Mark Davies. Sources and topics are varied: Coronavirus, Wikipedia, soap operas, movies, TV, news on the web, etc. Available for classroom use (UNC also has research-only versions--see our catalog for a full list of textual corpora).
Internet Archive
API to access millions of pages in the Archive.
New York Public Library's Digital Collections
API to access more than 800,000 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.
On The Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Resistance open educational resource
On the Books was a machine learning project in the UNC Libraries to identify Jim Crow laws in North Carolina. (The project is expanding to other states as well.) This open educational resource (OER) enables students to interact with the resulting corpora, one of all laws and one of identified Jim Crow laws, with the goal of learning critical computational concepts and skills that can be applied in historical research. Scroll down on the page to see the description of the modules and how to get started.
Qualitative Data Repository
QDR stores digital data generated and analyzed through qualitative and multi-method research. The repository’s holdings include different types of projects, and multiple types of qualitative data including (but not limited to) unpublished primary sources, published primary sources, primary sources cited in secondary sources, and secondary sources. Data are stored in a variety of formats and media: alpha-numeric (e.g., word-processed text, databases, spreadsheets), audio (digital and non-digital), video, and photographic (digital and non-digital).
Twitter API
API gives access to "listen" in real-time for Tweets of interest, conduct historical research and search from Twitter's massive archive of publicly-available Tweets posted since March 2006, and more.

Tools

Mukurtu
Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is a grassroots project aiming to empower communities to manage, share, narrate, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways.
StoryMaps
A free tool to help you tell stories on the web that highlight the locations of a series of events.
Tableau Public
Free visualization software but requires posting the underlying data to the web. (Available for purchase if you need keep your data private.)
Tropy
Spend a lot of time photographing archival documents? Tropy can help you organize those research photos. "Spend more time using your research photos, and less time searching for them."
OpenPose
An open-source program for real-time pose detection in 2D images, developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Voyant
A web-based reading and analysis environment for digital texts.

Toolboxes

Carolina Digital Humanities' Digital Innovations Lab Tools and Resources page
A range of platforms, plug-ins, readings, and other items that might be of use.
Digital Research Tools (DiRT)
A registry of digital research tools for scholarly use. Developed by Project Bamboo, Bamboo DiRT makes it easy for digital humanists and others conducting digital research to find and compare resources ranging from content management systems to music OCR, from statistical analysis packages to mindmapping software.