ARTFL Text Alignment Tool
Tool that looks for patterns of similar text across various ARTFL (Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) collections. Useful for examining instances of “direct quotations, plagiarism and other forms of borrowings, commonplace expressions and the like.”
Pros: You can use ARTFL databases specifically established to use the tool to compare select texts; Fully open-source with a GitHub documentation page.
Cons: Learning curve for implementing your own instance of the tool.
Links:
- ARTFL page for Text Alignment Tool: Further description of the tool and links to the various implementations of it using ARTFL texts.
- GitHub page: For source code and documentation on the tool.
Digital Mappa
Open source digital publishing tool that includes support for multimedia and annotation of texts.
Pros: Open source and browser based.
Cons: Needs to be installed on a server (hosted or your own), which requires some technical knowledge and resources.
Links:
- Digital Mappa: Official page.
Hypothes.is
Social annotation tool that is created specifically for classroom use. Now supported for integration into Canvas. Alternatively, web version is free, requires Chrome add-on download.
Pros: Free; Integration with Canvas allows for easier grading of student annotations than with Manifold.
Cons: Web version requires creating login and add-on download, use of Chrome browser.
Accessibility: Annotation requires mouse use to highlight text.
Links:
- UWIT Guide: UWIT guide on using the Canvas-integrated version.
- Hypothes.is website: The official site, which includes basic information about the tool, download option for the web version, and opportunity to sign up for periodic trainings hosted by the company.
- Using the Hypothesis LMS App with Assignments in Canvas: Tutorial from the app creators.
Manifold
Interactive publishing and annotation tool. Manifold is geared more toward publishing works rather than classroom annotation use, but the latter is still possible. Open source but needs to be hosted/installed on a server. Supported by UW Libraries, which has a vendor-hosted instance.
Pros: Can ingest a number of different document and media types, including Google Docs; Faculty can be made users and their students can be added as user groups without requiring added permissions or logins. UW Libraries are happy to provide support for using Manifold and host periodic trainings as well as offer the possibility of one-on-one training.
Cons: Manifold projects can’t be migrated out of or downloaded from the system; they also can’t be migrated from one instance to another (say you got your own server and installed a local instance of Manifold and had a project in the UW Libraries’ instance of Manifold, you couldn’t move the project to your new server – you’d have to rebuild). This is a known issue but a fix is not expected soon.
Accessibility: Highlighting text for annotation and opening the palette tool requires use of the mouse.
Links:
- UW Libraries Manifold Pilot Guide: Extensive guide created by the Libraries specific to UW’s Reclaim-hosted instance of Manifold.
- Adding texts to Manifold: Illustrated guide to ingesting texts to use in your course’s annotation assignments.
- Annotating with Manifold: Illustrated guide to creating and managing reader groups for course annotation assignments, annotating and commenting in texts.
- Manifold guide to annotating, commenting, and reading groups: Guide from the app creators.
Voyant
Web-based text analysis tool that is comprised of multiple tools for textual analysis and visualization.
Links:
- Voyant Tools: Tool site.
- Voyant Guides: Numerous guides to using the various tools, building a corpus, etc.