"The World Religion Database (WRD) contains detailed statistics on religious affiliation for every country of the world. It provides source material, including censuses and surveys, as well as best estimates for every religion to offer a definitive picture of international religious demography. It offers best estimates at multiple dates for each of the world's religions for the period 1900 to 2050. The WRD also contains a feedback mechanism so that users can leave comments on sources or methodology related to any figure reported in the WRD. In addition, the WRD will be constantly updated with new sources of data as they become available, such as estimates of religious affiliation at the province level within countries and religious freedom information for all countries." (Description from the BULS Library Catalog Record)
Includes a link to the World religion database (WRD), a website edited by Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim, which "complements the WCD with detailed source material of religious affiliation including censuses, surveys and religious freedom data to the Province level." (Description and title from database title screen page, viewed Feb. 10, 2014)
A section of this database has statistical information within its holdings. The database holds, "OECD iLibrary is OECD's Online Library for Books, Papers and Statistics and the gateway to OECD's analysis and data. It replaces SourceOECD, and hosts all content so users can find- and cite- tables and databases as easily as articles or chapters"--OECD iLibrary About page." (Description and Title from the BULS Library Catalog Record)
The "foundational myth" (as cited on the home page of the Digital Theology Lab) of digital humanities was a Jesuit priest named Roberto Busa who sought to explore the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Text analysis tools like NVivo and Voyant allow for insights into a work previously undiscoverable, e.g. word usage and frequency. The portion of the guide will provide information concerning some of the tools at your disposal as an affiliate at Boston University, locating data, and resources available at Boston University.
Using NVivo, researchers are able analyze text documents like sermons, interviews, survey responses, articles and writings, social media, and more to discover and present key insights about a topic. NVivo is a resource available to the Boston University community for free for Windows and Mac (note: the Mac version lacks some functionality available in Windows). The School of Theology Library offers a workshop on using NVivo in theological research. Additional information for getting started can be found via the NVivo Knowledge Center and IS&T-offered training. Wide ranges of file types and data can be uploaded and analyzed within NVivo (text and video files, Zotero citations, images, etc.) Once coding is finished, NVivo offers a multitude of visualization options like word clouds, concept maps, tree maps, sunbursts, and more.
NCapture is a free web-browser extension for Chrome and Internet Explorer that enables you to gather web content to import into NVivo. Capture webpages, Tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook content; it is then able to be imported into NVivo. Social media data captured over time can be merged into one file.
Open-source, free-to-use web-based tool that provides word clouds, contexts, word maps, vocabulary density, and trends with little fuss and little effort getting off the ground. Several documents can be added into a corpus to scan (take, for example, this Jane Austen corpus here). Panels can be exported and placed within webpages, blogs, essays published online, etc.
Why Data Visualization?
By converting your raw research data into tables, pie charts, bar charts, histograms, etc., you are making your data more accessible and easier to understand for humans, especially if you have collected a large amount of data. It helps get that “main point” out much more concisely! By being able to understand what your data is saying, you may notice a trend you may not have noticed otherwise, giving you greater insight into your research.
The following list of tools for data visualization is available to Boston University students and instructors at no cost (either through an institutional subscription, or availability as open source or free software).
Free courses through Edx: Data Visualization for All
TimelineJS (and other Knight Lab storytelling tools)
