DH Toys and Resources

These are some of the tools we have used to build our projects: 

Twine — https://twinery.org Open-source tool for building interactive, branching narratives and nonlinear stories with no coding required (though it supports HTML/CSS/JS for more advanced work). A staple for electronic literature and interactive fiction.

INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) — https://inke.ca A Canadian-based research network, anchored by the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute, focused on fostering open social scholarship: academic practice that enables the creation, sharing, and engagement of open research by specialists and non-specialists. More a partnership/community than a tool, but a key node in Canadian DH. 

Scalar — US hosted authoring at https://scalar.usc.edu -- Canadian libraries host their own installation. A free, open-source publishing platform from the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, supported for media-rich, born-digital scholarship. Strong for nonlinear, recursive, multimodal essays and exhibitions. 

Pressbooks — https://pressbooks.com --- Book-production platform (built on WordPress) for creating open educational resources, monographs, and multi-format ebooks (web, EPUB, PDF). Widely used for open-access and OER publishing.

GitHub Pages (web design/hosting) — https://pages.github.com Free static site hosting straight from a GitHub repository — ideal for portfolios, project sites, and lightweight DH archives, with full version control.

Voyant Tools — https://voyant-tools.org Free, web-based environment for text analysis and reading — word frequencies, concordances, trends, and visualizations. A workhorse for distant/computational reading.

ArcGIS — https://www.arcgis.com (storytelling builder at https://storymaps.arcgis.com) Esri's mapping and spatial-analysis platform; ArcGIS StoryMaps lets you combine maps with text, media, and narrative. Powerful but institutionally licensed (worth flagging cost vs. the open tools above).

Omeka — https://omeka.org Open-source platform for building digital collections, archives, and exhibits with strong metadata standards (Dublin Core). Use Omeka Classic for self-hosting; Omeka S for linked-data, multi-site projects.

StoryMapJS (Knight Lab) — https://storymap.knightlab.com Free, open tool from Northwestern's Knight Lab for telling place-based stories on a map (or over a large image/"gigapixel"). Much lighter-weight than ArcGIS for simple spatial narratives.

Adobe Creative Cloud (Adobe Suite) — https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html Subscription suite (Photoshop, Premiere, InDesign, After Effects, etc.) for image, video, and layout production. Industry standard, but proprietary and subscription-based.

Scroll Cinema — https://www.altsalt.com/scrollcinema/ A tool from AltSalt (Artemio Morales) for authoring scroll-driven cinematic web experiences without programming. Its editor works like other creative software — you build animations on a timeline with reels, axis switches (vertical/horizontal scrolling), easing, and post-processing filters — to make immersive, scrollable narrative pieces that run on the web and mobile. A strong fit for research-creation storyworlds. 

AR — Halo AR — https://www.haloar.app A full-service augmented/mixed reality platform aimed at museums, education, and exhibitions. It lets you build interactive 3D experiences (models, audio, video) viewable instantly on visitors' phones and tablets or on headsets like Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and Microsoft HoloLens — no coding required.

VR — Unity — https://unity.com Real-time 3D development engine for building VR (and AR/3D) experiences across desktop, mobile, and headsets. Industry-standard and highly flexible, with a steeper learning curve than the web-native options — which matches your team having a dedicated developer for it.

For more DH tools see: Alan Liu's DH Resouces for Project Building