18.140 historical development of text-analytic tools

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 140.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: "Ken Cousins" <kcousins_at_gvpt.umd.edu> (56)
         Subject: Re: 18.136 historical development of text-analytic
                 tools?

   [2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk> (27)
         Subject: history of text-analytic tools & methods

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 07:16:15 +0100
         From: "Ken Cousins" <kcousins_at_gvpt.umd.edu>
         Subject: Re: 18.136 historical development of text-analytic tools?

Hello Øyvind.

The following might be of use to you:

Min, S. (2003). Mark Lombardi: Global Networks. New York, The Drawing
Center. [40]

Brown, D. (2002) Going Digital and Staying Qualitative: Some Alternative
Strategies for Digitizing the Qualitative Research Process.
(www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-02/2-02brown-e.htm).

Fielding, N. (2002). Automating the Ineffable: Qualitative software and the
meaning of qualitative research. Qualitative Research in Action. T. May.
London, Sage: 161-78.

Fielding, N. and R. Lee (2002). "New Patterns in the Adoption and Use of
Qualitative Software." Field Methods 14(2): 197-216.

Gibbs, G. R., S. Friese, et al. (2002) The Use of New Technology in
Qualitative Research. Introduction to Issue 3(2) of FQS.
(www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-02/2-02hrsg-e.htm).

Bradley, J. (2000). Tools to augment scholarly activity: an architecture to
support text analysis. Informatica Umanistica: Filosofia e Risorse
Digitali, Bologna, Italy.

James, J. B. and A. Sørensen (2000) Archiving Longitudinal Data for Future
Research: Why Qualitative Data Add to a Study's Usefulness.
(www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-00/3-00jamessorensen-e.htm).

Keats-Rohan, K. S. B. (2000). "Prosopography and Computing: a Marriage Made
in Heaven?" History & Computing 12(1): 1-10.

Roberts, C. W. (2000). "A Conceptual Framework for Quantitative Text
Analysis." Quality & Quantity 34(3): 259-74.

Thomas, G. D. (2000). The Machine-Assisted Creation of Historical Event
Data Sets: A Practical Guide. International Studies Association Annual
Meeting, Los Angeles, CA.

Borgatti, S. P. (1996) Notes on the History of Social Network Analysis.
AnalyticTech.com. Internet. (Based on John Scott's Social Network Analysis:
A Handbook)

Raben, J. (1991). "Humanities Computing 25 Years Later." Computers and the
Humanities 25(6): 341-50.

Tesch, R. (1990). Qualitative research: analysis types and software tools.
New York, Falmer Press. (Chapter 2: "History of Qualitative Research")

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I am interested in the historical development of such tools, what were the
aims, how did they change, what were the results. Furthermore, my main
interest is the analysis of texts in a historical context - historians have
not used such software as much as (some groups of) linguists and philologists.

Are any books or articles published about the history of these tools?
Or are there other sources to information about this development?

I am also interested in discussions on reasons why historians are less
interested in using such tools than other researchers.

Ken Cousins
Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda
Department of Government and Politics
3114 C Tydings Hall
University of Maryland, College Park
T: (301) 405-4133
C: (301) 758-4490
F: (301) 314-7619
kcousins_at_gvpt.umd.edu

"The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
         Albert Einstein

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 07:17:27 +0100
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: history of text-analytic tools & methods

Øyvind Eide, in Humanist 18.136, asks about the historical development of
text-analytic tools. This is surely a topic promising one or more very fine
intellectual histories. At one time I made enough of an attempt to glimpse
the potential for the history of the concordance, in "Handmade,
Computer-Assisted, and Electronic Concordances of Chaucer", in
Computer-Assisted Chaucer Studies, ed. Ian Lancashire, CCH Working Papers 3
(Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, 1993): 49-65, online at
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/essays/concordance/. But don't get
your hopes up very far -- I had the opportunity merely to see, in the brief
notes I made there, that a genuine history was possible. I'd guess that the
project would be too much for a PhD dissertation, though a good beginning
could be made that way. The author would probably have to be a medievalist
or be able to function as one, since what since the 13C we would call the
prehistory of the concordance is where the foundations were laid. Asking
what the makers of it at St Jacques (Paris) thought they were doing would
be essential, and the answer that would likely come back would drive one
straight into the earlier history of biblical exegesis.

Then there's the historiographical problem of writing the history (as
opposed to the chronology) of technology -- learning to "read the machine",
as Michael Mahoney says.

Yours,
WM

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Received on Tue Aug 17 2004 - 02:39:38 EDT