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Adoption of technology

Colin Greenstreet edited this page Nov 16, 2024 · 2 revisions

Historical adoption of digital technology of relevance to academic research historians [year of introduction]

Infrastructure

Personal computers [1977]: Apple II [1977], Commodore PET

Web browsers: WorldWideWeb [1990/91], Mosaic [1993], Netscape [1994], Internet Explorer [1995], Safari [2003], Firefox [2004], Chrome [2008]

Cloud storage and service [2006]: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Drive

General Transformers [2017]: OpenAI: GPT-1 [2018], GPT-2 [2019], GPT-3 [2020], GPT-4 [2023]; Google: PaLM [2022]. Bard/Gemini [2023]; Meta: LLaMA [2023]; Anthropic: Claude [2023]; Mistral: Mistral 7B [2023]; Technology Innovation Institute (UAE): Falcon [2023]


Standard setting

WWW [1990/91]: Framework built upon standards managed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - HTML, HTTP, URLs

JPEG image format [1986], TIFF format for archival-quality images [1986]

IIIF [2011]: image and metadata sharing standards for inteoperability in GLAM institutions


Programming languages

SPSS [1968], SQL [1974], MatLab [1984], Perl [1987], HTML [1991], Python [1991], Java [1993], R [1993]


Desktop software tools

Word processing: Wordstar [1979]; WordPerfect [1982]; Word [1983]: Microsoft Word for MS-DOS, later Microsoft Word for Windows

Desktop SQL databases [1989]: Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro

Natural Language Processing [1990s (early NLP research dates back to the 1950s]: NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) (Python)[2001], Stanford NLP Toolkit (Java/Python)[2002], spaCy [2015] (Python)

GIS: ArcGIS [1997], QGIS [2002]


Software services

Google search [1998], Google Scholar [2004]


Academic social networks

Academia.edu [2008], Researchgate [2008], Humanities Commons [2016]


Digital bibliographical tools

EndNote [1998], Zotero [2006], Mendeley [2008]


Digital books and manuscripts

PROQUEST: EEBO [1998], Google Books [2004]


Digital imaging

Digital cameras [1988, 1990]

Smart phones: Apple iPhone [2007]


Digital image repositories

UK: British Library Digital Collections [2004], Wellcome Collection [2007. National Gallery Collection [2013]

France: Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) [1997], RMN-Grand Palais (Réunion des Musées Nationaux) [2011], Musée du Louvre Online Collections [expanded 2021]

Spain: Hispana (Biblioteca Nacional de España) [2006], PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles) [2007], Prado Museum Online Collection [2009]

Germany: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg [1995], Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Digital Collections [2009], Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) [2012]

U.S.: Library of Congress Digital Collections [1994], NYPL Digital Collections (New York Public Library) [2005], Smithsonian Institution Collections Search Center [2008]


Digital projects

Old Bailey Online [2003], London Lives [2010], MarineLives [2012], Layers of London [2018]


Archival and Library services

UK: TNA: PROCAT [1998], Discovery [2013]; British Library: Manuscript's Online [2013]

USA: NARA: NAIL [1997], OPA [2010], National Archives Catalog [2014]

Pan-European: Europeana [2008]

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