TAPoR – DR. MILENA RADZIKOWSKA

2003—

TAPoR is a gateway to the tools used in sophisticated text analysis and retrieval.

TAPoR was originally created to be a directory only of tools used for text analysis, but it has evolved to its current iteration where it includes a far greater range of tools including code snippets that can do the work of tools. In 2018 TAPoR absorbed the DiRT project (Digital Research Tools) and now includes tools that work on non-textual data and tools that provide services used by digital humanists. This evolution largely reflects that of the field of digital humanities, and the collection includes the following categories of tools:

Publishing Tools—used by digital humanists to share research and to create new types of online research resources
Communication Tools—these are used and studied in DH, especially as relating to novel ways of communicating or managing digital humanities projects
Repositories and Archiving Tools—digital humanists create digital research resources, many of which are made available to the public for free use
GIS Tools—used to visualize spatial data. Research can be explored by geographical region using GIS
Browser Extensions
Photo/Video/Audio Editor and Related Tools—used to edit, analyze, produce, and publish multimedia objects
Development Tools

The project is led by Geoffrey Rockwell and Milena Radzikowska; developed by the Arts Resource Centre at the University of Alberta; and supported by Compute Canada Calcul: Westgrid the Canadian Institute for Research Computing in the Arts, University of Alberta, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Others who have contributed significantly include Kirsten Uszkalo, James Chartrand (and Open Sky Solutions), Omar Rodriquez-Arenas, Kamal Ranaweera, Mark McKellar, Amy Dyrbye, Kaitlyn Grant, Holly H. Pickering, Chaolan Wu, Jingwei Wang, Kynan Ly, Antony Owino, Jason Bradshaw, Jinman Zhang, Robert Budac, Quinn Dombrowski, Shawn Day, and Lisa Goddard.

With TAPoR 3.0 you can:

Discover text manipulation, analysis, and visualization tools
Discover historic tools
Read tool reviews and recommendations
Learn about papers, articles and other sources about specific tools
Tag, comment, rate, and review collaboratively
Browse lists of related tools in order to discover tools more easily

The TAPoR 3.0 redesign aimed to:

Improve tool discovery interface
Improve engagement with text analysis tools
Focus on the discovery and social use of text analysis tools
Better communicate information about text analysis tools
Provide an Application Programming Interface to other services
Gather and reflect data about tool usage use

Where it’s been published/presented

Zielke G., Rockwell, G. Radzikowska, M., Sinclair, S., and O. Rodriguez-Arenas. Paper on “TAPoR 3: Code as Tools” presented by Zielke at the CSDH 2016 conference at the HSSFC Congress at University of Calgary, Alberta.
Rockwell, Geoffrey. “TAPoR: Building a Portal for Text Analysis”, in Mind Technologies: Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community. Ed. Raymond Siemens and David Moorman. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006, p. 285-299.
March, 2014: “What if Tools Were Research: Remembering Development through TAPOR” at 11th Annual Université de Montréal English Graduate Conference on “The Economies of Future Past: Redefining the Space(s) of (Post)Memory.”
May, 2014: “Repenser le numérique au 21e siècle” at the Congrès de l’ACFAS at Concordia University in Montreal, Québec.
March, 2011: “Rebuilding TAPoR: Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities” for ND EPSCoR State Cyberinfrastructure Conference – 2011.
February, 2009: “The TAPoR Project” at the Digital Humanities Observatory, Dublin, Ireland.
September, 2008: “Cyberinfrastructure: Reflections from TAPoR to Tools” at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network Annual Meeting.
March, 2008: “High-Performance Computing and the Digital Humanities: The TAPoR Experience” at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Alberta.
June, 2007: “TAPoR: Text Analysis Portal for Research” at the ADE/ADFL 2007 meeting in Montreal.
December, 2005: “TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research)” at a session “New Technologies of Literary Investigation: Digital Demonstrations” at the Modern Languages Association 2005 Convention in Washington DC.
October, 2005: “Through the Portal; From Roberto Busa to TAPoR” at the Humanities Research Group at the University of Windsor.
November, 2004: “TAPoR: Building a Portal for Text Analysis” at the CANARIE Advanced Networks Workshop, 2004 in Halifax.
November, 2004: “Introduction to TAPoR” for The Face of Text conference.
May, 2004: “TAPoRware: Exposing Texts to Text Analysis” at a seminar at Brown University on Online Resources for the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
December, 2003: “TAPoR: Text Analysis Portal for Research” at the Orion-CA*net 4; Advanced Networking Day at McMaster University.

We remember co-lead Stéfan Sinclair who passed away on August 6th, 2020.