Finding Digital Research Tools with DiRT Directory

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If you have ever found yourself coming up short in your search for an app, plugin or webservice for a certain niche purpose in your research or teaching, the DiRT Directory may help. Started by Lisa Spiro, executive Director of Digital Scholarship Services at Rice’s Fondren University, DiRT is a crowdsourcing site that aggregates “digital research tools for scholarly use.” The directory is easy to navigate, allowing users to search by the kind of work they want to do (from statistical analysis and data visualization to mindmapping and website creation) or the type of data they want to work with (e.g., images, n-grams, text, etc.).

One of the great features of this project is the ability to save your tools in a “Tool List” if you need to come back to it later. By quickly creating a free account, you can also contribute to the directory and add or suggest a new tool. Here is a sampling of the categories for searching tools on DiRT.

Analyze Data Annotate Archive Data Capture Information
Clean Up Data Collaborate Comment Communicate
Analyze the content of my data Convert files Create Crowdsource data enrichment/analysis
Design Find information Disseminate Data Add markup to an object
Enrich metadata about an object Collect Information Add identifiers to data Interpret data
Model data Analyze networks between my data Organize data Preserve data
Program Publish Record audio/video Analyze relationships between pieces of my data
Share Analyze the geographical aspect of my data Store data Analyze the structure of my data
Analyze the stylistics of my data Theorize Transcribe audio, video or manuscrips Translate
Visualize Data Build a website Write Etc.

Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the DiRT project is already integrated with the Commons In A Box (CBOX) Scholarly Network, which is available to members of the Texas Digital Humanities Consortium. Future plans are in the works for DiRT to also integrate with the DHCommons collaboration platform.

Try DiRT Directory


(Thanks to Edie Furniss, Director of the UH Language Acquisition Center, for introducing me to DiRT Directory.)

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