TAPoR, Text Analysis Portal for Research, is a project from the University of Alberta which collects textual analysis software designed for researchers (as you could probably guess from the name). Getting into textual analysis is not easy, especially for people without a background in computer science. Luckily, the number of tools for textual analysis are growing and becoming easier to use for non-specialists. TAPoR does a great job of collecting these tools at one convenient site, and they do a great job of it!

As of this moment, there are 362 tools listed on TAPoR under the following headings:

  • Concording
  • Editing
  • Miscellaneous
  • New
  • Popular
  • Search
  • Statistical
  • Text Cleaning
  • Text Gathering
  • Visualization

The number may be a little inflated: the different features of Voyant Tools, for example, have their own listing. But that withstanding, this is an excellent collection of textual analysis tools. They range from the simple, such as the popular Wordle tool for creating word clouds, to the complex and multifaceted, such as their listing for the R programming language. Listings come with short descriptions of the tools and some minor commentary. As I said, the portal is not complete, but its a great start if you are getting into text analysis. Also, if you know of a tool that isn’t listed, send them the link: they are actively looking for more submissions.