The Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) caters to the digital preservation of research, reformatting of paper to digital, and use of editing tools and software that enhance the scholarship of MTSU and the collections of Walker Library. In addition to the software available throughout the Library, this guide shares specific digital/data tool options in the library and other open source (free) tools available online. This guide also shares resources to learn about other tools or digital/data methodologies.
Tool Indexes are a starting place for finding information and how-tos for the type of research tools that can be used in digital scholarship, digital humanities, data science, etc. Check some of the Tool Indexes below:
Examples of what you can do with digital tools that are described in the above indexes include:
Free Books
Answering questions with data: Introductory Statistics for Psychology Students
Make graphics, visusals, maps, documents interactive with Thinglink. Requires (free) account sign up.
Researchers use digital and data tools for various phases of the research lifecycle. This includes data management, data collection, data cleaning, data analysis (methods including sentiment analysis, entity extraction, document summarization, theme analysis, statistical analysis, and more), data visualization, dissemination and preservation.
R is an open-source programming language and command-based application for visualization and analysis although R is primarily used for statistical analysis, so it lends itself well to text mining.Walker Library has R pre-downloaded on computers on the 4th floor east side; and all 4th floor group study rooms. You can also download R for free on your personal machine.
SPSS is software package used for interactive, or batched, statistical analysis. This is an IBM product, available download and available on all four floors of Windows computers in Walker Library. Walker Library occasionally offers NVivo workshops. When offered, these will be listed at https://dsi.mtsu.edu
RQDA & QCoder is a R package for Qualitative Data Analysis, a free qualitative analysis software application. This tool is mostly used for analysis of textual data.To some extent, RQDA and R make an integrated platform for both quantitative and qualitative data analysis.
Check out these free online course offerings! Brush up on your skills or learn something new! One example course:
"Text Mining and Analytics" class offered by the University of Illinois as part of Coursera's Data Mining Specialization (available for free or as a paid certification program).