This page is a companion to a guest lecture prepared for ARCH 3819/ARCH5819. 

Class Preparation

Please bring a laptop. If you do not own one, feel free to check one out at the Olin circulation desk. Our explorations are intended to be participatory.
No special software will be needed. All explorations will be done through a Web browser.

Discussion of terms

There will be a short discussion where we define terms (at least loosely) so that we might use a common language for our discussion and critique of these tools and their strategies.

Explorations

All analysis tools will be demonstrated; no prior knowledge of any tools will be required. The room is equipped with video input to allow sharing of your desktop on the screen.  If you discover something that you would like to share and discuss, we can easily do so.

Word Frequencies

Voyant is a low barrier text analysis tool that delivers a rich, interactive interface and a variety of visualizations.

• Data: Text of your choosing.  Upload interface accepts files in the following formats: plain text, PDF that has embedded OCR, MS Word doc and docx files, URLs. Can take multiple documents to make a set.  Upload of any material will be subject to the Voyant privacy policy.
• Analysis: Voyant environment lists every word in the document and counts for each.  Also calculates frequencies based on the total word word count of the document(s) in the uploaded set. 
• Visualization: Interactive dashboard: Wordcloud, graph of frequency over document segments, tabled secondary data, source data as text.  Also has navigational aids that integrate source and secondary data, and utilities like stopword control, URLs for display, etc. 

Sample texts and URLs for analysis are listed below for experimentation, but feel free to use other source data that interests you. 

• Sample texts for upload are below, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. Download plain text version to your local machine for upload into the Voyant interface
  
  • Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900. The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War.
  • Montessori, Maria, 1870-1952. (George, Anne E., Translator). The Montessori Method
  • Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II
• Sample URLS: copy and paste into the Voyant upload browser window to get started.
  • DSPS Press - http://blogs.cornell.edu/dsps/
  • Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code - http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92preface.html
  • Niagara Falls (Wikipedia) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls
• Sample Visualization
  
  • Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream..."

nGrams

nGrams depict the frequency of a word or word phrase and are most often depicted over publication year.  We have two nGram tools, each leveraging different source data.

Google's nGram Viewer. The links below as starting points.  Dynamic modifications can be made at any point. Rules for syntax can be found on the About page.

• Data: Primary source data was selected volumes from Google Books (methodology is described here). 
• Analysis: Tool is integrated with secondary data (tokens, counts, frequencies, publication dates) derived from primary source. 
• Visualization: Simple line graph plots of ngram frequency over publication date.  
• Examples
  
  • Urban renewal
  • Names of New York City
  • Spanish words in English publications
  • Frequency for which Roland Barthes has been cited in various languages
  • Terms related to racial integration
  • "Ebola" 1975-2008 in various languages (compare with data from WHO on Ebola outbreaks and a map of official languages of African countries)

HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) Bookworm

• Data: Primary source data is the openly viewable texts from the HathiTrust Research Center (publications mostly pre-1923).
• Analysis: Tool is integrated with secondary data (tokens, counts, frequencies, publication dates) derived from primary source by the HTRC. 
• Visualization: Simple line graph plots of ngram frequency over publication date. Tool has faceting control as well.
• Examples
  • Spanish Words in English publications

Network Analysis

Data:

Analysis:

Visualization:

Spatial and Temporal Representation

Data:

Analysis:

Visualization:

If time permits, we might look at Viewshare, a free tool provided by the Library of Congress that allows you to generate and customize interactive maps, timelines, facets, and tag cloud visualizations of digital collections.  The tool presupposes that you have an account and your data ready, including location and/or time related data fields in some basic forms.  A few helpful tutorials are available. Viewshare can be embedded into other web experiences.