This is more of an announcement of something coming than something that's already happened, but it's been in the works for a long time and I'm glad it's finally so close to coming to fruition.

The new three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War will be coming out at last next month, and I can scarcely conceive of a 2300-page document that I'm more eager to get my hands upon. Jay Winter's overriding involvement had initially concerned me (he's very good at what he does, which is cultural history, but not always very good at what he doesn't do, which is operational history), but he's been excellent in editorial capacities in the past and I've no doubt this new set will be very worthwhile indeed.

Each volume looks like it will be an absolute goldmine of essays from the biggest names in the field, most writing from the perspective of the new historiography that has come to dominate First World War studies since the 1990s. I'll be placing an institutional order for this ASAP, assuming one isn't already in the system, but it's really tempting to just, uhm, get my own. A disastrous temptation. Do I really need to eat for the next couple of months? I think I can get by on the idea of food, if need be.

Thoughts about Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, "Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture," which discusses new methods of mining digital data, especially Google's Ngram, which allows word and phrase searches of millions of books, eventually will reach nmost of the books in existence. Limited use has been made in legal history work, as in establishing usage at time Constitution was ratified. The authors who helped develope Ngram describe is as an invention comparable to the telescope or microscope, something that allows us to see history happening, which I suppose in a way it does. I have looked into the increasing use of Americanisms, but confess I am just confirming what was known or suspected. Anyone out there using this or other Big Data tools? Thoughts?

Hi AH. I wanted to mention that the team which created the brilliant science tools at Zooniverse has just launched a project called "Operation War Diary."

The purpose of the project is to crowdsource the transcription of war diaries from British soldiers on the Western Front in WWI.

Basically, your job is to look at a scan of a handwritten journal entry from the war, and convert it into typed characters.

Might be a cool project to assign to students for those of you who are teachers.

Edit: there's a 10-minute tutorial you can do that gives you a flavor for the work, so you needn't worry about having to commit to anything major just to take a look.