ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on examples from historical research, but it is designed to appeal to researchers in the humanities more broadly by presenting two distinct historical workflows: the one for modern history, the other ancient, the one based on archival documents, the other classical texts. The research starts with a question and it begins to develop only with a trip to the archives. This immediately brings to mind the ubiquitous concept of historical research, often associated with Leopold von Ranke as a practice requiring a solid basis in primary sources and a critical knowledge of the secondary literature. Perhaps if the scale were much larger, then it would not be conceivable to do this kind of work manually, but even then, except for the very largest documentary collections, it might still be possible for a group of researchers to do by hand.
