Resource: Introducing DocSouth Data: Old Texts for New Readings

From the announcement:

When the UNC Library launched Documenting the American South (DocSouth) in 1996, the project helped set the standard for publishing historic texts online.

Nearly twenty years later, DocSouth is poised to reach a new set of readers—the computers that digest and find patterns in immense bodies of text through techniques known as digital text analysis.

The newly-released DocSouth Data makes the full text of hundreds of nineteenth-century books and pamphlets available for easy download as text-only files. The materials come from four text-heavy Documenting the American South collections: The Church in the Southern Black Community; First-Person Narratives of the American South; Library of Southern Literature; and North American Slave Narratives.

Instructions for downloading texts are on the DocSouth Data web page. Varner is glad to consult with students or faculty members who would like to learn more about performing text analysis with DocSouth Data or with other bodies of text. Reach him at svarner@email.unc.edu or (919) 962-2094.