18.136 historical development of text-analytic tools?

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 136.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 07:44:33 +0100
         From: Øyvind Eide <oyvind.eide_at_muspro.uio.no>
         Subject: Software for analysis, old and new

Dear humanists,

The idea of writing a piece of software for import and analysis of
texts is an old one, and heavily used in some areas of the
humanities. A concordance program is an example of such software. I am
interested in the historical development of such tools, what were the
aims, how did they change, what were the results. Furthermore, my main
interest is the analysis of texts in a historical context - historians
have not used such software as much as (some groups of) linguists and
philologists.

Are any books or articles published about the history of these tools?
Or are there other sources to information about this development?

I am also interested in discussions on reasons why historians are less
interested in using such tools than other researchers.

--
/ Kind regards,
/ Øyvind Eide, Unit for Digital Documentation, University of Oslo
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