Information for Interview Participants

In preparation for the interview, I suggest that you think of any past experiences you may have had with text analysis tools. If you have had no such experience, this is perfectly fine, the interview will include some time to explore some simple tools as well.

Please read the following information and visit the associated links to familiarize yourself with the text analysis tools that you will have the opportunity to interact with during the in person or Skype interviews in which you will be participating. Please feel free to experiment with the tools and to use some of your own texts for this purpose. As the email inviting you to participate stated, we are inviting you to bring texts that are already in the public domain to the interview, and that if you wish, by emailing us at least a day before the scheduled interview date (the more notice the better) we could preload some of these public domain texts into the tools for ease of use during the interview.

Cirrus

Cirrus is a visualization tool that displays a word cloud relating to the frequency of words appearing in one or more documents. One can click on any word appearing in the cloud to obtain detailed information about its relativity. The larger the word, the more frequent the term. A full description of the tool, expanding on the short description here including more information about how it is used and how to use it is found here: http://hermeneuti.ca/voyeur/tools/Cirrus

The actual link to the tool: http://voyeurtools.org/tool/Cirrus/

If you wanted to look at it preloaded with a text, here is an example with text from Shakespeare: http://voyeurtools.org/tool/Cirrus/?corpus=shakespeare

And with an English stop words list included here: http://voyeurtools.org/tool/Cirrus/?corpus=shakespeare&stopList=stop.en.taporware.txt

List Words

Description: This tool lists words found within a given text document in different manners. It can list all words, words matching a pattern, all words except stop-words etc. It can also list words by applying a inflectional stemmer. The results can be sorted alphabetically, by frequency, by order of appearance, or in reversed alphabetical order and displayed in different format.

Feel free to play with the tool or follow these directions: Enter a valid URL in the URL field or enter a local path to upload text, Select which list you want to get and enter the corresponding text if necessary, Select sorting criterion, Check the "Apply inflectional stemmer" box if you want to apply the stemmer, Select output format, Select a number in the "Display top ..." selection control if you want to see the top frequency words distributions, If you want the results displayed in the same window with taporware interface, uncheck the check box - "Open results in new window", Finally, click the "Submit" button, In the result page, you can click any word to get its concordance with 5 words of context.

To use the tool on a html site use this link: http://taporware.ualberta.ca/~taporware/htmlTools/listword.shtml

To use the tool on a plain text document use this link: http://taporware.ualberta.ca/~taporware/textTools/listword.shtml

Find Words

Description: This tool can find phrase/pattern anywhere in a text document. The search can also be used to view a concordance of either words, sentences, or lines surrounding the result.

Feel free to play with the tool or follow these directions: Enter a valid URL in the URL field or enter a local path upload the source text Enter word/pattern in the corresponding text field Select the context of concordance and enter a integer as the length of context Select output format If you want to display the word lists before and after the word/pattern, check the "Display words before and after the pattern" box. this is for HTML format only If you want the results displayed in the same window with taporware interface, uncheck the check box - "Open results in new window" Finally, click the "Submit" button In the result page, you can click any word of the concordance to get its concordance without go back to the tool page.

To use the tool on a html site use this link: http://taporware.ualberta.ca/~taporware/htmlTools/findtext.shtml

To use the tool on a plain text document use this link: http://taporware.ualberta.ca/~taporware/textTools/findtext.shtml

Bubbles

If you have time, please feel free to play around with Bubbles. Please have the sound turned on when playing with this tool (though it is suggested to wear headphones or be in a location where you will not be disturbing others. The link to the tool itself is found at: http://voyeurtools.org/tool/Bubbles/

Preloaded with Shakespeare as a text: http://voyeurtools.org/tool/Bubbles/?corpus=shakespeare

And with an English stop words list included here: http://voyeurtools.org/tool/Bubbles/?corpus=shakespeare&stopList=stop.en.taporware.txt

Thank you in advance for your participation in the interview!

-- AliGrotkowski - 29 Sep 2011

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