Digital Scholarship: Digital / Data Tools

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:

• Dirt Directory (archived copy)
• TAPoR
• TERESAH

Examples of what you can do with digital tools that are described in the above indexes include:

• creating a mashup
• editing images
• make a screencast
• how to publish/share information
• brainstorming ideas
• blogging & networking
• analyzing data, networks, spatial analysis
• how to collect & analyze data
• transcribe handwritten or spoken texts
• web scrapping, data mine
• and so much more!

Free Books

• Data Visualization for All
  • A friendly introduction to designing interactive charts and maps.
• R for Data Science
  • How to use the R programming language to do all kinds of data science techniques, including data visualization.
• Fundamental Statistical Concepts in Presenting Data: Principles for Constructing Better Graphics
  • Good data visualization principles from a statistics perspective.

• Answering questions with data: Introductory Statistics for Psychology Students

• Linear Regression Using R: An Introduction to Data Modeling

• Python for Everybody: Exploring Data Using Python 3

• The Data Journalism Handbook

Make graphics, visusals, maps, documents interactive with Thinglink. Requires (free) account sign up.

Digital / Data Tools

• 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.

Data Tools Available in Walker Library

• ArcGIS is a geographic information system (GIS) for working with maps and geographic information. This is a product of ESRI and available on all four floors of  Windows computers in Walker Library

• 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

Other Free Data Tools

• Gephi is an open graph visualization platform that supports exploration of all kinds of networks and complex systems.  Gephi can be downloaded for free onto any Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X device.
• Mallet is a Java-based package for statistical natural language processing, document classification, clustering, topic modeling, information extraction, and other machine learning applications to text. 
• Neatline is a suite of add-on tools for Omeka, it opens new possibilities for hand-crafted, interactive spatial and temporal interpretation.
• OpenRefine is a free, open source tool which offers a number of powerful functions to quickly and efficiently clean your data. For tutorials on how to use OpenRefine, see the products created by the University of Illinois.
• Python is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Available for download.
• QGIS is a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system application that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of geospatial data

• 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.

• Scrapy is an open source and collaborative framework for extracting the data you need from websites.  It is available as a free download for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X.
• Tableau Public is a free software download that can allow anyone to connect to a spreadsheet or file and create interactive data visualizations for the web. Account sign up required, all data is open to the public.
• TimelineJS is a free web-based tool for creating timelines. Requires use of Google Docs.
• Voyant  is a web-based reading and analysis tool for digital texts.  Voyant allows you to type in multiple URLs, paste in full text, or upload your own files for analysis.
• Wordle is a web-based word cloud tool that creates word clouds from text you provide. 

Check out these free online course offerings! Brush up on your skills or learn something new! One example course:

Text Mining Online Class

"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).