Introduction to AirTable Workshop
On Wednesday September 24, 2025, DSG Data Engineer Joel Lee led an introductory workshop on AirTable, a database-spreadsheet hybrid. AirTable is software that allows you to represent relational databases. According to Joel, AirTable is a database application that looks like a spreadsheet. Since databases can be more inaccessible to non-tech people, AirTable has the functionality of a database with the user interface benefits of a spreadsheet, making it an excellent tool for digital humanities research.
First, Joel provided definitions for both spreadsheets and databases. He defined a spreadsheet as a 2-dimensional digital document that organizes data in a grid of columns and rows and is relatively agnostic about what goes into those columns and rows. Databases, on the other hand, are organized collections of data within a particular application or system. Unlike spreadsheets, databases require a defined scheme and are thus more particular about content. Relational databases map objects that relate to one another, often through related tables.
The bulk of the event was a hands-on workshop, where the group worked together to create a relational database on the Best American Short Stories anthology collection. This is an anthology published annually that features 15–20 American short stories. Joel emphasized the importance of writing out the goals of a relational database before beginning any work in AirTable, to map out the kinds of fields and relationships that would be needed. The group collectively identified four tables that would be useful for this database: information on the Publisher, Anthology, Story, and Author. Joel explained how these tables are connected to each other in different ways. For example, the relation between the Story table and Publisher table must be 1:1 because a story only has one publisher. On the other hand, the relation between the Story table and the Author table must be ∞ to ∞ because authors can write more than one story and stories can have more than one author. Joel mapped out this prospective database on a whiteboard before turning to AirTable.
Whiteboard database mapping
After the goals of the database had been defined on the whiteboard, Joel turned back to AirTable. He provided a walkthrough of building this database in AirTable, so participants were able to follow along on their own devices. He demonstrated how to make a series of related tables in AirTable and how to define the relationships between them. Joel walked the group through building a skeleton of the database that was defined in the whiteboard activity.
To highlight the functionalities of AirTable, Joel turned to a fully made AirTable database of the Best American Short Stories from 2000–2024, which he had built prior to the workshop. He demonstrated the different views available in AirTable, while underscoring the importance of understanding that editing in any of the views makes edits across all the views and tables. Joel also explained how the interface area of AirTable can create simple visualizations of the data. He showed a visualization of the gender distribution of the authors of the short story anthology as an example. Because of the interconnections between the different tables, making graphs of this kind was easy.
He concluded with a discussion of what sort of projects AirTable is the right fit for. AirTable is a paid product, but there is a free version that allows for up to 1,000 records and up to 5 editors. Joel believed that for some projects, especially smaller projects such as in the DH Graduate Certificate, the free option of AirTable would be more than sufficient. For larger projects, Joel pointed to the open source NocoDB, which is essentially an open source version of AirTable (and can import data from AirTable as well!).