TAPoR - A Canadian Text Analysis Portal for Research TAPoR, the Text-Analysis
Portal for Research, is a major new initiative in the field of
humanities computing. Funding has been recently announced from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, providing about $2.6 million (Canadian) toward a total project cost of $6.78 million dollars.
The project will establish six regional centres across Canada, which will be the anchors in a national text analysis research network. The project will provide a multi-faceted portal for researchers via the Internet, where they can access electronic text resources, and new suites of software for the conversion, adaptation, analysis, display and publication of electronic text. The undertaking is the largest ever of its kind in Canada and among the largest in the world.
The TAPoR project represents the first major initiative in Canada to exploit the Web as an intelligent medium for text. (We read "text" broadly to mean any record of human communication that can be digitally represented.) In addition to providing a framework for computing in textual and related fields, it represents an opportunity for the community of humanities computing scholars in Canada to actively participate in international fora which are developing standards, tools, and methods in this field.
McMaster University is the lead institution in this national initiative: the other partners represent leading humanities computing centres in Canada: University of Victoria (in collaboration with Malaspina University College), University of Alberta, University of Toronto, Université de Montreal (Law) and University of New Brunswick.
Our paper will briefly survey current humanities computing practice in Canada, and discuss the strategic issues facing us as we deploy the physical infrastructure for TAPoR. In the longer term, TAPoR has the potential to influence the practice of humanities scholars in Canada and beyond our shores. We will review the relevant experience from other national initiatives in the field, including the HUMBUL portal in the United Kingdom.
Project Description
TAPoR will build a unique human and computing infrastructure for text analysis across the country by establishing six regional centres to form one national text analysis research portal. This portal will be a gateway to tools for sophisticated analysis and retrieval, along with representative texts for experimentation. The local centres will include text research laboratories with best-of-breed software and full-text servers that are coordinated into a vertical portal for the study of electronic texts. Each centre will be integrated into its local research culture and, thus, some variation will exist from centre to centre.