Come Play with Ngram Viewer

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Judith Arnold

I am a complete novice in this realm but I want to learn. I am hoping there are some more like-minded attendees who will enjoy a truly exploratory session. And I also hope someone out there will propose a session on the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

Come Play with Ngram Viewer
A “talk and play” session proposed by Judith Arnold, Wayne State University (Detroit)

One of my colleagues showed me this tool and I was immediately taken with it. I am proposing a Play and Talk session (45 to 60 minutes) where we play with this tool for 20 minutes or so and then spend the rest of the time discussing how different disciplines (or even ourselves in library science) might use this tool. Google Ngram Viewer (books.google.com/ngrams/) visualizes word frequency in the corpus of Google Books. You can chart the occurrence of words over time and even in advanced features determine how the word is used (through part of speech tags), so I can imagine that linguists, for example,  would be interested.  I experimented with words for an upcoming instruction session on literary studies to see what Ngram Viewer could show me about the prominence of different authors over time and I generated some interesting graphs, which I will bring with me. So bring your iPad or laptop and join me in some exploration, fun, and idea exchanges.

Categories: Session Proposals, Text Mining, Visualization |

About Judith Arnold

I have heard about THATCamp through my ACRL LES Digital Humanities group and am interested in "experiencing" it. My job responsibilities include liaison areas in the humanities (English, Classics). I have served as a teaching partner in English courses in DH and New Media. While my technology background is probably "lite" compared to most who attend this event, I am generally familiar with applications to create instructional tools (such as Camtasia) and various iPad apps (Notability, Haiku). My professional interests center on information literacy and student research habits and on building a better understanding the DH, projects, and tools to help support faculty.