Open Data is great - despite the fact most historians have no idea what it is or how to use it. It uses standard vocabularies, namespaces, and taxonomies to describe data, allowing researchers to move data from one context to another easily. Yet it's also rather complicated for the average humanities scholar (let's be honest here) since it also requires familiarity with data types and formats like XML, JSON, Turtle, etc. These aren't always usually picked up for those with mind towards prose and manuscripts, though they're not difficult, really. When it comes to the bibliographic world, we now have excellent tools for quickly creating lists and generating metadata as needed - Zotero, EndNote
read more