Open Source Software
Free and open-source DH tools
Three Digital Humanities tools we invested in — clearer documentation, easier setup, and active development. Depending on your use case, they run on our cluster and elsewhere.
The work followed a path of needs assessment, evaluation, expert workshops, and development. Per-tool working papers and an overarching evaluation paper are due from Q2 2026. Below: what each tool is, what we changed, and where to find it.
QLever
An efficient SPARQL engine for querying very large knowledge graphs (such as Wikidata) — over 100 billion triples on a single standard machine, with markedly faster responses than most alternatives.
What we improved
| Before | After (DHInfra) |
|---|---|
| Steep entry barrier for new users | Quickstart & step-by-step guides |
| Docs scattered, patchy, partly outdated | Fresh, unified docs (continually expanded) |
| No standardized, reusable examples | Ready-to-use, versioned Qleverfiles |
- Documentation — completely rebuilt at docs.qlever.dev (since late 2025, continually expanded): quickstart, Qleverfile reference, troubleshooting.
- Use cases — unified Qleverfiles (24 commits since Dec 2025), publicly provided via pull request (
qlever setup-config); overview with dataset size, resources and live demos at docs.qlever.dev/use-cases. - Deployment — official packages for Debian / Ubuntu / macOS (since 21 Jan 2026); Docker images (QLever UI & Petrimaps); reproducible and tested before every release.
liiive.now
Real-time collaborative image annotation built on IIIF — annotate together, live, in the browser. github.com/rsimon/liiive (MIT licence).
Two ways to run it
- Hosted — no installation, instantly usable; ideal for teaching and demos.
- Self-hosted — your own server / VPS (institution or cloud) for full control over your data.
What it does
- Real-time collaboration with shared navigation and live cursor tracking
- Comments and threads on annotations
- IIIF API support and annotation export
- Anonymous sessions via a shared link — no login required
Under the hood
Browser-based web app · real-time sync over WebSockets · Supabase database · IIIF Image & Presentation API · self-hostable. Typical uses: manuscript analysis and source annotation in DH, seminars and group work in teaching, and curatorial collaboration in cultural institutions.
Zellij
An open-source system for documenting and managing semantic data models. A new release named pletka is out, with more to be published soon.
What the new release brings
- Pluggable storage backend on an open-source relational database, with project versioning — store new and existing projects, keep multiple versions of a project, and create, delete or select the current version.
- A modern, web-based Admin Dashboard — register and manage organizations and users; create and manage projects, models, collections and fields; reuse libraries of patterns; and generate, publish and share new patterns.