1. How can I use this workbook?

This is an interactive workbook. It will not only take you through the jargon and basics of computer assisted text analysis, but allow you to try it yourself as you go along.

Try It Panels

Throughout this workbook there are interactive panels that allow you to try what you have learned. These are the Try It panels. If you understand the material, ignore them and go on; if not, try them out. The panels will run real searches of a full text and return real results, so be patient if this takes a moment. Once you get the results you can use the Back button in your WWW navigator to get back to the workbook.

TACTweb Text Analysis Environment

The Try It panels will get progressively more and more sophisticated; at the end you can use the TACTweb Query Form that gives you access to a full computer text analysis environment. This environment runs on an IBM PC compatible. It is built out of a World Wide Web server that is connected to a text engine (the TACTweb program). When you submit a query using a WWW form, the WWW server passes the query to the text engine. The text engine then passes back a page of results to the server that in turn sends that to you.

The Text

The text you will be working with in this workbook is William Shakespeare's famous play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Some of you may not have read this text. That doesn't matter, the point of this workbook is not to read the text but to understand how computers can help you study a text.

The Buttons

At the top and bottom of each page you will find standard buttons that allow you to navigate through this workbook.

At the top of each page you will find the following buttons:

[Previous] This takes you to the previous document as they are listed in the table of contents. In this case it would take you to the table of contents.

[Table of Contents] This takes you to the table of contents wherever you are.

At the bottom of each page you will find these buttons:

[Try It! - or the TACTweb Query Form] This takes you out of the workbook to the query form where you can try out searches.

[Next] This takes you to the next document as they are listed in the table of contents. In this case it would take you to the What is Computer Assisted Text Analysis.