NB! Voyant can process XML, PDF and word documents without cleaning them first.

For this task you’ll run a standalone version of Voyant server, Voyant can be used online. The benefit of running a local version is that you won’t be transmitting sensitive documents across the internet. We’ll be looking at Mass Observation content that we do not have permission to use online.

Jobs

• 1. Launch a ‘Stand Alone’ version of the Voyant Server
• 2. Load a Session Paper, or MO document or folder of documents (Tips: Start Small it will make more sense, you may need to create a zip file to upload a collection).
• 3. Explore the visualisation tools and layout options.

Why did you do this?

The purpose of this exercise was to introduce you to the range of visualisations and text processing that can be achieved using Voyant tools, and also to make you aware of the standalone version which means you can work on datasets without uploading them.

The most common issue I saw when people worked with a standalone Voyant server in the previous iteration of this workshop was that participants were not familiar with a local website address (127.0.0.1) or port number syntax (:8888)

127.0.0.1 is the numeric address of localhost. Localhost is the machine you are working on. 8888 is the port number the Voyant tools server is configured to respond too. For further reading I suggest taking a look at http://docs.voyant-tools.org/about/examples-gallery/ . The link shows examples of Voyant in research