Reading with Computers: A Beginner’s Guide to Text Analysis for Humanists

Reading is central to most humanities disciplines: historical accounts, newspapers, records, literature, journals and periodicals all provide hugely valuable sources of information to scholars. The amount of material available online, whether born digital or digitised, has increased exponentially over the last decade, offering new ways of interacting with research collections and source texts. Yet not all humanists are trained in how to use digital methods, and it can be hard to figure out what advantages or challenges they might present. Pitched at complete beginners, this gentle introduction presents an opportunity to learn about the potential that computers offer when it comes to ‘reading’ text, what the limitations of computational approaches to text analysis are, and what tools are available for researchers interested in exploring the potential of these methods.