Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) for Historical Research

For those individuals who are interested in history and want to research their family history or document the history of their  town, local church building, etc.  the following are links to selected low cost or free 'open source' software (FOSS) products or tools that you might want to check out:     Videos

History & Research Software Tools

• CHNM History Research Tools - The Center for History & New Media (CHNM) offers free tools and resources for historians to help collect, manage, cite, and manage research data and sources.
• ChronoZoom - An open source community project owned by the Outercurve Foundation and dedicated to visualizing the history of everything.
• Genealogy & History Software - List of open source genealogy & history software projects/products available from SourceForge.
• History Software @Amazon.Com - List of commercial History software products available from Amazon.
• History & Genealogy Open Source Software - A blog listing a series of open source software products for genealogy and family history research.
• iThinkEd - Microsoft's free software tools for helping researchers publish and share information.
• National Archives Genealogy Tools - Providing links to a range of open access web sites and open source software tools.
• Scholar's Aid - A popular shareware bibliographical data manager, notes and/or information information manager for students and scholars
• SmartPhones – History & Social Study Mobile Apps - A series of free or low cost mobile History apps available from MobileTopSoft.
• TimeLine Web Widget - A web widget that allows you can make beautiful interactive timelines to better visualize temporal data.
• Wandora - A general purpose information extraction, aggregation, management, and publishing application based on Topic Maps and Java.
• Zotero Research Tool - A free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.

Other General Purpose Software Tools

• Apache Software - Originally known for being an open-source web server solution, it has now grown into a large collaborative software community with a wide range of complementary projects and products.
• GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) - A multi-platform photo & image manipulation tool.  It is an open source alternative to Photoshop.
• Java - A free, portable programming language and/or software development platform originally created by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. 
• Libre Office - A comprehensive open source software suite of office applications (e.g. word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) that provide very similar capabilities as MS Office.
• Linux - A widely used open source operating system for small and large scale computer systems originally created by Linus Torvalds
• Mozilla & Firefox - A wide range of open source software products developed by the growing Mozilla 'open' development community. Products include the FireFox web browser, Thunderbird email, etc.
• MySQL - An open source database management system (DBMS) that offers the full functionality of similar commercial products such as MS SQL, DB2, Oracle, etc.
• Open Office - A comprehensive open source software suite of office applications (e.g. word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) that provide very similar capabilities as MS Office.
• OpenProject  - A free and open source project management software solution that can serve as a replacement for MS Project.
• SourceForge - The world's largest open source software development and software repository web site.
• VLC - A popular free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most CD, DVD,  and many other files & streaming protocols.
• Wikipedia - A free web-based encyclopedia that anyone can access, edit, or use.

* Take a few minutes to look at the COSI 'Open' Education and COSI 'Open' History web sites.

 A number of these free and 'open source' software (FOSS) tools were used in gathering data and building the Historic Summerton S.C. and Historic Clarendon County web sites.