AI for humanities research: books, archives and long arguments

This guide is for students and researchers in history, literature, philosophy, art history and religious studies who work mainly from books, archives and their own close reading. It is part of our guide to AI for qualitative research and research by field.

Can AI help with historical research?

Yes, but as an assistant to your reading, not a substitute for it. That is the rule for all AI for humanities research. Humanities arguments rest on what a specific source says on a specific page, and that is exactly where language models are weakest: they produce plausible quotations, dates and book titles that do not exist.

A primary source is a document or object created at the time you are studying, such as a letter, newspaper, diary, court record or the literary text itself. A secondary source is later scholarship that interprets primary sources. AI can help you move faster through secondary sources. It should never stand between you and a primary source.

Why do scholarly search tools miss so much humanities work?

Because most of them are built around journal articles, and the humanities publish in books. Mongeon and Paul-Hus compared the journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus and found that arts and humanities journals were notably underrepresented in both, as were journals not published in English [1]. Any tool offering AI for humanities research on top of a similar article index inherits the same gaps.

Monographs, edited collections, exhibition catalogs, scholarly editions and older or non-English work are often missing or thinly described. For a humanities project, search these as well:

How to use AI for humanities research with books and archives

Keep a clean chain from the source to your sentence, and use AI only on material you have already recorded. This procedure works for a thesis chapter or a journal article.

1. Log every source as you find it. For archives: repository, collection, box or volume, folder, item, date. For books: full citation and the edition. A spreadsheet works.
2. Photograph or scan, then transcribe. Transcribe the passages you will use yourself, or correct any automatic transcription against the image.
3. Separate quotation from paraphrase in your notes. Put exact words in quotation marks with the page or folio. Mark your own paraphrase and AI summaries differently, for example with a tag such as [AI summary, not checked].
4. Use AI on secondary reading. Upload articles and chapters you have the right to use and ask focused questions: "What is the author's main claim in chapter 3?" Then check the answer on the page it cites.
5. Draft the argument yourself. Write the claim, the evidence and your reading of it.
6. Ask AI to read your draft back to you. "Summarize the argument of each section in one sentence" shows whether the structure works. If the summary misses your point, the section probably does too.
7. Check every quotation and reference against your source log before you submit.

A worked example (invented)

Example project: a 12,000-word master's chapter on how local newspapers in two Welsh mining towns reported the 1918 influenza.

• The student found 46 relevant articles in digitized newspapers and logged each with title, date, page and column.
• She quoted from 19 of them, all transcribed by hand from the page images.
• She uploaded 8 secondary articles and 2 book chapters and asked each the same three questions about argument, sources and period. All 30 answers were checked on the cited page; 3 were corrected because they overstated the author's claim.
• When she asked a general chatbot for "newspaper quotes about the 1918 flu in Wales," it returned two quotations with newspaper names and dates. Neither could be found in the digitized papers. She used neither.

How should you quote and give page references?

Quote exactly, and give the page for every quotation and every close paraphrase. Humanities readers check quotations, and a wrong page number looks like carelessness even when the quote is right.

• Keep original spelling and punctuation in historical sources. Mark your own changes with square brackets.
• Show omissions with an ellipsis, and never cut words in a way that changes the meaning.
• Set long quotations as block quotations. MLA sets off prose quotations that run to more than four lines [7]. Chicago generally sets off quotations of a hundred words or more.
• Cite the page or folio, not just the work. For archival items, the note gives the item, folder, box, collection and repository.

How do you cite a book chapter in Chicago style?

Chicago's notes and bibliography system uses a full note the first time, a shortened note after that, and a bibliography entry. Chicago notes and bibliography is a citation system in which sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes and listed in a bibliography. The 18th edition (2024) made a few practical changes: the place of publication may be left out, the page range of a chapter is optional in the bibliography, and shortened notes are preferred over "ibid." [8][9].

The examples below use an invented chapter.

First note:

1. Mary Hale, "Coal, Chapel and Contagion," in Wales and the Great Influenza, ed. Owen Price (Example Press, 2019), 52.

Shortened note:

2. Hale, "Coal, Chapel and Contagion," 58.

Bibliography:

Hale, Mary. "Coal, Chapel and Contagion." In Wales and the Great Influenza, edited by Owen Price, 45–72. Example Press, 2019.

The same chapter in MLA (9th edition) Works Cited:

Hale, Mary. "Coal, Chapel and Contagion." Wales and the Great Influenza, edited by Owen Price, Example Press, 2019, pp. 45–72.

In MLA, the in-text citation is (Hale 52).

Chicago or MLA: which one should you use?

Use the one your department or journal names. If you have a choice, this table helps.

How do you cite AI use in the humanities?

Disclose it, and cite the sources AI helped you find rather than the AI. The MLA Style Center says to cite a generative AI tool whenever you quote, paraphrase or use content it created, starting the Works Cited entry with a description of the prompt, and that you should cite the original source instead when AI only helped you find it [10]. Chicago guidance generally asks you to acknowledge the tool in your text or a note rather than the bibliography [11]. Check your department's policy, which may be stricter than either style guide.

Doing humanities work in AI for Research

AI for Research is built around scholarly papers and your own documents, so it helps most with secondary reading, citations and long-form writing. It does not search archives, library catalogs or JSTOR.

• Question your own PDFs with page citations. Upload articles and chapters to My Library and ask "What evidence does the author use for the strike of 1898?" Each answer cites the page so you can check it. Storage is free; each question costs 1 credit. The PDF needs a text layer: scanned pages without one come back empty, so run OCR first.
• Find journal articles. Find Papers searches 250M+ scholarly works at 0 credits. Coverage of books and older humanities scholarship is thinner, for the reasons above, so keep your library catalog open too.
• Cite in Chicago or MLA. Citations and bibliographies are free, in Chicago, MLA and 10,000+ other styles. See the citation generator.
• Bring your existing library. Zotero and Mendeley import is on paid plans; see reference manager import.
• Write long arguments. The editor keeps citations live while you write, and exports to Word, PDF and LaTeX. Writing Studio can draft a thematic or chronological literature review (15 credits) or one section (3 credits) from sources you choose. Use it for the review of scholarship, not for your reading of the primary sources.
• Share with a supervisor. A Project can be shared by email as "can comment" or "can view."

See pricing for each plan's monthly credits.

FAQ

Can AI help with historical research?

Yes, for parts of the work. AI can suggest search terms and archives, summarize secondary literature, help you read a difficult passage, draft translations for you to check, and test whether your argument holds together. It cannot replace reading the primary sources, and it may invent quotations, dates and references. Verify every fact and quote against the source itself before it goes into your notes.

How do I cite a book chapter in Chicago style?

In a note: author first and last name, chapter title in quotation marks, 'in' and the book title in italics, 'ed.' and the editor's name, then publisher and year in parentheses, and the page you cite. In the bibliography: last name first, the chapter title, 'In' the book title, 'edited by' the editor, the page range, publisher and year. The 18th edition makes the place of publication and the bibliography page range optional.

Should humanities students use Chicago or MLA?

Use whatever your department or journal requires. History, art history and many religious studies programs use Chicago notes and bibliography, because footnotes suit archival sources and discursive comments. Literature and language departments usually use MLA, with short parenthetical citations and a Works Cited list. If you have a free choice, Chicago handles manuscripts and archival material more flexibly.

Why can't I find humanities books in scholarly search tools?

Most scholarly indexes are built around journal articles with DOIs, and they cover the humanities less well than the sciences. A comparison of Web of Science and Scopus found arts and humanities journals underrepresented in both. Books, edited chapters, non-English work and older scholarship are often missing. Search your library catalog, WorldCat and digitized collections such as HathiTrust and the Internet Archive as well.

How do I cite AI in MLA or Chicago?

MLA treats AI output as a source without an author: the Works Cited entry starts with a description of your prompt, then the tool, version, company and date. Chicago generally asks you to acknowledge the tool in your text or a note rather than in the bibliography. In both styles, if you only used AI to find sources, cite the sources themselves, not the tool.

Next steps

• For interviews, focus groups and other qualitative data, read the series guide: AI for qualitative research.
• Setting rules for a research group? See AI tools for research labs.
• Organizing a growing pile of PDFs and notes? Read how to organize research papers.

Sources

1. Mongeon, P., & Paul-Hus, A. (2016). The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: A comparative analysis. Scientometrics, 106(1), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1765-5
2. WorldCat. https://search.worldcat.org/
3. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://www.hathitrust.org/
4. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/
5. Library of Congress. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
6. Europeana. https://www.europeana.eu/
7. Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook, 9th ed. (2021). MLA Style Center: https://style.mla.org/
8. The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. University of Chicago Press, 2024. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/
9. Chicago Manual of Style Online. Notes and Bibliography: sample citations. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
10. MLA Style Center. How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/
11. The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., section 14.112, on citing generative AI. University of Chicago Press, 2024.