1. Patricia Cohen, “Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches,” New York Times, 16 November 2010.
2. Scholars count all of the reasons that quantification has long been useful. See Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250–1600 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Patricia Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Patricia Cohen, “The Emergence of Numeracy,” in Mathematics and Democracy: The Case for Quantitative Literacy, ed. Lynn Arthur Steen (New York: Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 2001), 23–30.
3. We are thinking here of databases, statistical research, geographical information systems, image editing, text-editing software, and so on. Even spreadsheet software, which is ubiquitous and easy to use, is highly effective for many historical research purposes.
4. Stefan Dormans and Jan Kok, “An Alternative Approach to Large Historical Databases: Exploring Best Practices with Collaboratories,” Historical Methods 43, no. 3 (2010): 97–107.
5. Jacques Henripin, La Population canadienne au début du 18e siècle: nuptialité, fécondité, mortalité infantile (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954); Hubert Charbonneau, La population du Québec: études rétrospectives (Montreal: Les éditions du Boréal express, 1973); Jacques Légaré, “A Population Register for Canada under the French Regime: Context, Scope, Content and Applications,” Canadian Studies in Population 15, no. 1 (1988): 1–16; Gérard Bouchard, “Family Reproduction in New Rural Areas: Outline of a North American Model,” Canadian Historical Review 75, no. 4 (1994): 475–510; Gérard Bouchard, Quelques Arpents d’Amérique: Population, Économie, Famille au Saguenay, 1838–1971 (Montreal: Les Éditions de Boréal, 1996).