Incorporating the Sensemaking Loop from Intelligence Analysis into Bespoke Tools for Digital History.

The discipline of intelligence analysis, like the discipline of history, requires its practitioners to create interpretations supported by large collections of sources that may be incomplete, inconsistent, ambiguous, and occasionally deceptive. Here I argue that models of the intelligence analyst’s research process, structured techniques for qualitative reasoning under uncertainty, and software for incorporating human ‘sensemaking’ can all be adapted for use by historians. In doing so, I provide a sustained example of digital historical research using a large online collection of historical sources, the Old Bailey Online.