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Research Tools: Analyze Text

An index of useful tools and software for the research process.

Examine written content (like articles, transcripts, or books) to identify themes, keywords, or language trends. Text analysis is common in humanities and social sciences research.

Note: Tools with an asterisk (*) utilize some form of AI (artificial intelligence). Please consult your class syllabus or professor before using these tools.

Apache Tika

 

Toolkit for detecting and extracting metadata and text from over 1000 file types. Useful for indexing and content analysis.

Type: Text Analysis

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: Must be installed on personal computer

Availability: Desktop

Skill Level: Intermediate

Potential Use Cases: Students in digital humanities or information studies extracting text and metadata from files for analysis or indexing.

Hypothes.is

 

Web-based annotation tool for collaborative highlighting and commenting on web pages and PDFs.

Type: Text Analysis

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: From personal computer or any campus computer lab

Availability: Web-based

Skill Level: Basic

Potential Use Cases: Enables students to collaboratively annotate readings for class, especially useful for literature, journalism, or history courses.

Recogito

 

Semantic annotation platform for texts and images; identify and mark named entities without coding.

Type: Text Analysis

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: From personal computer or any campus computer lab

Availability: Web-based

Skill Level: Advanced

Potential Use Cases: Humanities or classics students can annotate historical texts, maps, or manuscripts without coding.

ChatPDF*

 

Instantly read, analyze, summarize, and translate PDFs in 50+ languages.

(File size limit is 10MB for free users. Longer papers with many images will likely exceed this limit)

Type: Text Analysis

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: From personal computer or any campus computer lab

Availability: Web-based

Skill Level: Basic

Potential Use Cases: Useful for students reviewing academic articles, simplifying complex texts, or quickly summarizing sources.

NoScribe*

 

An AI-based software that transcribes interviews for qualitative social research or journalistic use. Recognizes over 60 languages and runs securely offline.

Type: Transcription

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: Must be installed on personal computer

Availability: Desktop

Skill Level: Intermediate

Potential Use Cases: Journalism or humanities students can transcribe documents for projects.

Taguette

 

User-friendly tool for coding qualitative data such as interviews and documents.

Type: Qualitative Data Coding

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: Must be installed on personal computer

Availability: Desktop

Skill Level: Basic

Potential Use Cases: Perfect for first-time student researchers coding papers, interview transcripts, or textual data for class projects.

Google Ngram Viewer

 

Charts frequencies of search strings using yearly counts of n-grams found in printed sources published between 1500 and 2019.

Type: Text Analysis

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: From personal computer or any campus computer lab

Availability: Web-based

Skill Level: Basic

Potential Use Cases: Useful for students in linguistics, history, or cultural studies tracking how language or topics evolved across centuries.

QualCoder

 

Desktop QDA tool for coding text, images, and audio data.

Type: Qualitative Data Coding

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: Must be installed on personal computer

Availability: Desktop

Skill Level: Intermediate

Potential Use Cases: Ideal for students conducting interview-based projects or ethnographic research needing to code media files.

Voyant Tools

 

Text reading and analysis environment for scholarly use.

Type: Text Analysis

Access: Free

Where Can I Access It?: From personal computer or any campus computer lab

Availability: Web-based

Skill Level: Basic

Potential Use Cases: Used in English, history, or digital humanities classes for analyzing patterns and themes in literature or corpora.

LSU Resources

Further Resources