Text Analysis with Voyant Tools

A Workshop at the University of California, Riverside

Getting Started

Downloads

Java

Before downloading Voyant, you will need to download Java if you don’t already have it. If you do have Java installed, you should still download and update your version.

Get Java

Voyant Server

This is a rather large download. If you can’t get it to download, I will have copies available on flash drives.

Get Voyant Server

Sample Data

This sample data has been curated from a larger corpus. It contains the entirety of the physical education publication Mind and Body which ran from 1882 until 1936.

Get the Data

Installation

Although Voyant Tools is a web based set of tools, we’ll be downloading it and running it locally. Downloading Voyant to your own computer brings a number of advantages but the main impetus for doing so today is so that we won’t encounter loading issues resulting from overwhelming the server. However using Voyant locally also means that your texts won’t be cached and stored on the Voyant Server, it allows you to restart the server if you encounter problems, and it allows you to work offline, without an internet connection.

  1. Install or Update Java
  2. Download Voyant Server from Github (If the download doesn’t work for you, I have the file on a flash drive)
  3. Unzip the Voyant Server Package. The resulting folder of files should look like this:
  4. Double click the VoyantServer.jar file. When you open this file a new window (see image below) will pop up with numerous server controls. If you’re curious about what these all mean you can read about the options in the documentation for the Voyant Server. However, in short, this window begins to launch a server which will generate the Voyant tools interface.
  5. Once the server has booted up a new browser window will open.
    ** If your default browser is Chrome you’ll need to paste the address into a new window in a different browser. Both Safari and Firefox work. The default address should be: http://127.0.0.1:8888/