FARMINGTON HILLS — The information services provider Gale has introduced a new Digital Scholar Lab, a cloud-based research environment that applies natural language processing tools to raw text data from Gale Primary Sources archives in a single research platform.
Gale officials say the new research environment removes key barriers to entry into digital scholarship, enabling users at any level to perform textual analysis on large bodies of historical texts, streamlining the workflow process to help generate new research insights. They say the new product simplifies complex workflows by integrating the most commonly used open source tools. This combination of content and tools allows researchers to analyze texts in ways that are unattainable through traditional close reading, allowing configuration of tools and content sets to meet users’ specific needs in a single research environment.
Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab combines analysis-ready raw text data with digital tools and algorithms to generate visualizations and discoveries that are the hallmark of data mining and digital scholarship. Importantly, the entirely new platform has been built to flexibly allow future sharing of analytical tools and to promote the global spread of digital scholarship.
Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab supports a broad spectrum of users:
* Scholars: The Digital Scholar Lab gives access to large data sets that are easily mined and edited for use in custom applications and digital tools without costly and time-intensive data clean-up.
* Librarians: With Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab, libraries can provide researchers of all levels the opportunity to engage with the humanities in entirely new ways without capital investment in costly computing environments, thus strengthening the library’s relationships across campus and increasing the value of its collections.
* Students: As a teaching tool, the Digital Scholar Lab provides a familiar navigational interface style for students new to text data mining and introduces them to textual analysis in a streamlined manner.
“Gale pioneered digital delivery of primary source archives making unique special library collections accessible to researchers globally,” said Marc Cormier, Director of Product Management for the Humanities at Gale. “Today, we launch a new platform equal to the task of analyzing massive content collections such a Gale Primary Sources with the intent of promoting new discoveries and broadening access to the tools of digital humanities.”
To request a trial, visit Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab webpage.
Gale is a business unit of Cengage, a Boston-based educational content, technology, and services company for higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets worldwide. It has 500 employees around the world and is headquartered in Farmington Hills. More at www.gale.com.