About this book:

This book serves as a comprehensive practical guide for researchers navigating the digital transformation of South American historiography. It begins by mapping the fragmented landscape of online repositories, ranging from the massive imperial archives in Seville and Lisbon to the evolving digital portals of South American national libraries and archives. Specialized chapters provide technical and ethical frameworks for accessing sensitive materials, such as Indigenous and community archives, while offering workflows for handling linguistic challenges, paleography, and the limitations of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in historical texts.

The middle section of the text focuses on the transition from data discovery to rigorous methodology. It introduces historians to the fundamentals of data modeling, the importance of building reproducible research workflows, and the use of tools like OpenRefine for cleaning messy archival data. The book demystifies technical concepts by explaining how to move from simple spreadsheets to relational databases and SQL. It also explores advanced digital humanities techniques, including geospatial analysis (GIS), text mining through topic modeling, and network analysis to uncover hidden social and institutional structures within the historical record.

As the scope moves toward contemporary history, the guide addresses the preservation of born-digital sources, such as social media and web archiving. It emphasizes the critical need for stable citation practices, persistent identifiers, and proactive data management plans to combat "link rot" and ensure long-term accessibility. The book concludes by framing digital history as a collaborative and public-facing enterprise, offering practical advice on securing grants, fostering interdisciplinary partnerships, and navigating the ethical and legal complexities of publishing open-access scholarship.

Throughout the volume, the author maintains that while digital tools significantly accelerate discovery and reveal large-scale patterns, they do not replace the necessity for traditional close reading and historical judgment. Instead, these technologies are presented as a means to augment the historian's craft, allowing for more transparent, verifiable, and inclusive research. By bridging the gap between technical expertise and archival rigor, the book empowers scholars to contribute to a more equitable and globally accessible understanding of South American history.

What You'll Find Inside:

• Strategies for navigating major digital repositories like the Archivo General de Indias (Spain), Torre do Tombo (Portugal), and national archives across South America.
• Ethical frameworks for engaging with Indigenous and community archives, emphasizing data sovereignty and respectful collaboration.
• Practical workflows for digital research, including the use of persistent identifiers (ARKs/DOIs) and web archiving tools like the Wayback Machine.
• Introduction to computational methods tailored for historians, such as text analysis (topic modeling), network analysis, and geospatial mapping (GIS).
• Guidelines for data management, including cleaning messy historical data with OpenRefine and building reproducible research pipelines.

Who's It For:

This book is designed for historians, researchers, and students specializing in South American history who wish to integrate digital methods into their archival practice. It is particularly beneficial for scholars working remotely with colonial or national records and those interested in applying digital humanities techniques to complex historical datasets. Additionally, it serves as a vital resource for librarians and archivists focused on the preservation and ethical dissemination of Latin American cultural heritage.