Tools

Search

BookLamp

BookLamp, part of the Book Genome Project, is a tool and a resource for finding books. It offers an alternative to social recommendation engines reliant on author popularity by treating its books as equal regardless of number of copies sold. BookLamp's goal is to match users to the books relevant to their interests as accurately as possible. Rather than genres, it uses 'StoryDNA', which identifies the thematic ingredients important to a book's narrative, in addition to how prominent that ingredient is within the text. BookLamp has been retired as of April 2014 and the website is no longer available. The site has been captured by the Internet Archive, and may still be viewed there via the Wayback Machine.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

Publishing

Omeka.net

Omeka.net provides a web-publishing platform to curate collections and create exhibitions of digitized content. Omeka.net has grown out of the Omeka project. Omeka.net provides some of the same functionality as Omeka, but does not require the user to provide hosting or to maintain their installation in any way. However, use of Omeka.net limits customization, and hosting more than 500MB of content requires a paid account. Objects in the collection can be cataloged with Dublin core metadata fields and georeferenced for display on a map. Omeka.net includes several plugins, including COinS (which makes objects in Omeka accessible to citations management software, like Zotero), HTML5 Media (to play audio and video), and Library of Congress Suggest (which will auto-populate fields with LoC authority and subject headings).

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

Web development

WordPress.com

Wordpress.com provides free ad-supported hosting for basic WordPress sites, with paid options for premium features (custom domain, extra storage, custom design, no ads, etc.)

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

Collaboration

Github

GitHub is a web-based repository service which offers the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of GIT with a graphical user interface, desktop, and mobile integration. It also provides collaboration tools such as access control, wikis, task management, code review, bug tracking, and feature requests. It offers free accounts, often used to host opensource software projects, and private (paid) repositories. Projects on GitHub can be accessed and manipulated using the git command-line interface and all of the standard git commands work with it. GitHub also allows registered and non-registered users to browse public repositories on the site. Multiple desktop clients have also been created by GitHub and other third parties which integrate with the platform. GitHub is mainly used for code but can also be used for non-code files, it supports the following formats and features: 3D render files Photoshop's native PSD format can be previewed and compared to previous versions of the same file. Nested task-lists Documentation and wikis Small websites can be hosted from public repositories on GitHub. The URL format is http://projectname.github.io. Issue tracking (including feature requests) Visualization of geospatial data Gantt charts GitHub is a heavily used in the opensource development community but does not require hosted projects to meet the definition of Open Source.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

Programming

Python

A general-purpose high-level programming language that places an emphasis upon code readability. Python supports a number of development models, including object oriented, imperative, and functional design. It provides automatic memory management and a fully dynamic type system. Features: Very clear, readable syntax Strong introspection capabilities Intuitive object orientation Natural expression of procedural code Full modularity, supporting hierarchical packages Exception-based error handling Very high level dynamic data types Extensive standard libraries and third party modules for virtually every task Extensions and modules easily written in C, C++ (or Java for Jython, or .NET languages for IronPython) Embeddable within applications as a scripting interface

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

Visualization

Omeka

Omeka is a content management system designed for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions. Omeka falls at a crossroads of Web Content Management, Collections Management, and Archival Digital Collections Systems. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation. It makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible templating system. Its robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite Omeka’s stability and sustainability. Omeka allows users to publish cultural heritage objects, extend its functionality with themes and plugins, and curate online exhibits with digital objects.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

Visualization

Textual Geography Analyzer

Parses text tagged by the Stanford named entity recognizer in order to collect and analyze mentions of locations. Also incorporates the Google API in order to geocode those locations and, ultimately, mark them on a map. This code was written in an IPython Notebook, so the code below is actually a collection of scattered code snippets. Please see the repository on github for full details and documentation, or the Methods Common recipe ( http://methodi.ca/recipes/mapping-locations-corpus ) for a step-by-step guide. NOTE: Users will be required to acquire their own Google API key, store it in a text file, and then point the code to that text file. Instructions can be found in the IPython Notebook itself. Search for "api_key_file" to find the line in code that needs to be changed.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

Enrichment

Zotero

Zotero is a free tool that collects, manages and cites research sources. It stays on your web browser where you do your work and it's easy to use. It's being downloaded as a firefox extension, used with the chrome and safari browsers or used as a standalone tool. It allows you to attach pdfs, notes and images to your citations, organise them into easily searchable collections for different projects, and open office using any of over 2800 citation styles. references can be added to a zotero library in many different ways: directly from databases, journal websites, google scholar or the library catalogue, by referencing file import ( for example from an Endnote library), by dragging in pdfs from your hard drive, and by entering them manually.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

Capture

Audacity

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder. Basic features, as listed on their website, include: Record live audio. Record computer playback on any Windows Vista or later machine. Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs. Edit WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis sound files. Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together. Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

Visualization

Heurist Data Manager / Visualiser / Publisher

HEURIST (http://HeuristNetwork.org) is an extremely flexible, end-user oriented, web-based data management system designed specifically for Humanities data. Developed since 2005, it has been in active use across many projects since 2009. It is available both as a free web service for researchers (hosted at the University of Sydney Data Centre) or for installation on a physical or virtual server (Open Source on gitHub). Researchers can design, create, manage, analyse, visualise and publish their own richly-structured database(s) through a simple web interface, without the need for programmer(s). Quite complex databases can be built in a few hours by borrowing structures and vocabularies published by other users. Databases can be designed and built incrementally, as existing data are not affected by changes in structure. Databases created by Heurist are stored in MySQL with a repeatable structure facilitating sustainability and independent access by other software. Advanced features include record linking, graph structure, drill-down facet searches, rule-based queries, custom reports, linked map-timelines, network visualisation, normalised spreadsheet import, crosstabulation, XML feeds, XSLT transforms. The team provides initial email and skype assistance for project setup at no cost, and special customisations at modest cost. Heurist is applicable in many domains including History, Archaeology, Anthropology, Cultural Research, Linguistics, Media Studies etc. It handles everything from text, tags and categories, through networks of rich relationships and offset annotations, to images, video, spatial data and dating (including non-western systems and dating uncertainty). Sophisticated searches (including faceted and rule-based) can be saved, organised and rendered as layered interactive maps, timelines, network visualisations, crosstabulations, lists, custom reports, XML and XSLT transforms, all of which can easily be printed or embedded (live) in a website - Heurist provides the html code required to embed results in a web page or CMS. Databases can easily be migrated later to a personal or institutional server. Since the data are stored in a standard MySQL database with a fixed and well-documented structure, the data can be accessed directly via SQL from most programming languages independently of Heurist. Version 4.2 (Jan 2016 onwards) is available as a service via the Heurist website. Version 4 delivers a user-customisable interface of widgets, along with better mapping and visualisation. Existing version 3 databases are bidirectionally compatible with version 4.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.