A tool for collaborative editing and annotation of PDF documents leveraging AI tools. For more information on using FineReader, see the ABBYY FineReader video tutorials & FineReader community support forums.
Resource:
Tafti et al. OCR as a Service: An Experimental Evaluation of Google Docs OCR, Tesseract, ABBYY FineReader, and Transym.
A robust PDF reader with OCR functionalities. For guides on using Acrobat, consult the Adobe Acrobat FAQ & Adobe Acrobat OCR documentation.
Resource:
Padova, T. (2011). Adobe Acrobat X PDF Bible (Vol. 755). Wiley.
eScriptorium is a browser-based, open-source platform used to automatically transcribe and recognize text in images of handwritten or printed documents, particularly for historical or archival documents. To learn how to use it, see the eScriptorium tutorial and documentation.
Resource:
Harish, R., & Raghavendra Rao, G. N. (2024). Transcription of Ancient Indian Manuscripts Through Artificial Intelligence—Current Status of Technology and the Way Forward.
A crowd-sourced transcription program accessed through the browser. Volunteers transcribe handwritten documents to create accessible copies of university collections. UTA supports its own domain for FromThePage for transcribing materials from UT collections. For use and more information, read our FromThePage library guide.
Example:
Terrell, Calvert and Troy (UGS 302): Past student transcriptions - transcription of a collection of letters from the 1890s on the Turkish violence against Armenians and other Christians in Turkey.
Resource:
Ortiz Baco, J., Guzman, A., & Palacios, A. A. (2020). FromThePage Collection Owner User Study Report.
A collection of tools for OCR and document analysis. These tools are for slightly more advanced users as it may involve a degree of pre-ingest treatment of the documents. However the array of tools and scripts provide a number of powerful features. OCRopus code is incorporated into the transcription of eScriptorium. For guides on installation and use, read the OCRopus documentation and installation instructions.
A module for conducting OCR in Python. It is a standalone application based on Google's tesseract. For more information, consult the pytesseract github page.
Resource:
Shah, A., Doshi, N., Shah, J., Goel, K., & Raut, P. (2021). Extraction of handwritten and printed text from a form.
A browser-based OCR tool created by Google. It is the core of pytesseract as well as integrated into Google Docs for OCR functionality but may be used in its stand-alone form as well. For more, see the Tesseract documentation and code on Github.
Resource:
Tafti et al. OCR as a Service: An Experimental Evaluation of Google Docs OCR, Tesseract, ABBYY FineReader, and Transym.
A tool for creating digital transcriptions of handwritten text, powered by user generated Training Models. Users can provide new documents, specifying language and time period to create Models for use by others. Users are allotted “credits” which are spent at a rate of about 1 credit per transcribed page of text, so those working with larger bodies of text may need to purchase credits or plan to space their transcription over a period of months. Guides on using Transkribus and creating training models can be found on the Transkribus help page..
Example:
Erwin, B. (2020). Digital Tools for Studying Empire: Transcription and Text Analysis with Transkribus.
NLTK is a Python library used for natural language processing tasks such as tokenization, stemming, lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, and sentiment analysis. Guides, an FAQ, and examples may be found on the NLTK GitHub.
Resource:
Qamar, U., & Raza, M. S. (2024). Applied Text Mining / by Usman Qamar, Muhammad Summair Raza.
Another Python library for advanced NLP tasks. It is powerful, designed for processing large volumes of text data, with features such as named entity recognition, dependency parsing, and tokenization. Users also have the ability to train new models on it. Get started with SpaCy's Quick-start & guides.
Resource:
Lee, R. S. T. (2024). Natural Language Processing : A Textbook with Python Implementation
Allows users to parse language into native python objects. With trainable models, and pretrained models in 70 different languages, users can have parts of speech recognized and sentence morphology understood. These tokenizing features also include named entity recognition, dependency parsing, sentiment analysis, and machine translation. To learn how to use it, consult their Stanza getting-started guide & Stanza tutorials.
Resource:
Haralambous, Y. (2024). Chapter 5: Syntax in A Course in Natural Language Processing
The Scientific Python Development Environment. This environment is amongst those preferred for scientific and data-driven work in Python, also featuring a number of quality-of-life features to make the scripting process easier. Spyder has a number of plug-ins to increase its functionality. For guides and add-ons, visit the Spyder documentation & Spyder plug-ins pages.
Resource:
First steps with Spyder - Part 1: Getting Started | Spyder IDE
Textblob provides a consistent API for NLP tasks within Python. It can perform most NLP tasks users may need, such as noun phrase extracting, part-of-speech tagging, sentiment analysis, and more. Installation and user guides can be found on the Textblob development blog.
A robust PDF reader with OCR functionalities. For guides on using Acrobat, consult the FAQ & OCR documentation. Note - an Adobe account is needed to access this application, however no payment is required to use it within PCL.
Resource:
Padova, T. (2011). Adobe Acrobat X PDF Bible
A geographical information system platform where users can collaboratively create data visualizations on maps. Beyond just mapping data, ArcGIS provides analysis tools for the maps created. To learn more and get started, consult the ESRI's ArcGIS tutorials and guides.
Resource:
Carpenter, C., Lange, J., & Szukalski, B. (2024). Top 20 Essential Skills for ArcGIS Online.
Examples:
Climate Change Impacts in Europe
Gallery of example maps & projects
A GIS tool that allows users to create projects where different locations can be saved and annotated. To learn how to use Google Earth, consult the Google Earth guide & Google Earth developer guides.
A data analysis tool that supports a robust number of formats. In addition to data imports from CSVs and spreadsheets, Logger can perform frame by frame video analysis and generate real-time visuals. For guides on using Logger Pro, view the Logger Pro troubleshooting and FAQs page.
Example:
Holovko, M., Kryzhanovskyi, S., & Matsyuk, V. (2022). Using digital technologies to study the behavior of rubber balloons.
A desktop environment for iterative analysis of data using script. MATLAB is often used in the creation and analysis of algorithms and models thanks to its live editing features. For help using MATLAB, consult the MATLAB getting started guide or these MATLAB video tutorials.
Example:
Fowdur, T. P., Indoonundon, M., Milovanovic, D. A., & Bojkovic, Z. S. (2025). Introduction. In 5G NR Modelling in MATLAB
Odeh, S., & Aden, I. (2025). Modeling of a Photovoltaic/Thermal Hybrid Panel for Residential Hot Water System.
A map making tool with layers for analysis and data management. Guides on its use can be found in the QGIS documentation & QGIS installation guide.
Example:
Examples of Good Map Design | IFRC Network GIS Training
Tableau Public allows you to combine data from a number of sources from simple CSVs to cloud platforms like Google Drive to create visualizations with thousands of possible permutations. More information can be found in the how-to videos on Tableau Public.
Examples:
London in Numbers by Naresh Suglani
An industry leading data analysis tool with language to cover topics across all of mathematics and data analysis. Its core functions are as varied as machine learning and audio computation. Explore the many applications of Wolfram Mathematica with the Wolfram Mathematica resource page & guides.
Resource:
Villalobos Alva, J. (2024). Beginning Mathematica and Wolfram for Data Science: Applications in Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Neural Networks.
Example:
Visualizing Topic Progression of a Text | Wolfram Youtube video
A collection of tools for OCR and document analysis. These tools are for slightly more advanced users as it may involve a degree of pre-ingest treatment of the documents. However, the array of tools and scripts provide a number of powerful features. OCRopus code is incorporated into the transcription of eScriptorium. For guides on installation and use, read the OCRopus documentation and installation instructions.
Formerly GoogleRefine, OpenRefine is an open-source desktop program used for “data wrangling.” In other words, it can clean and manage data, export it, and crosswalk the format to a number of desktop and online sources. For information on how to install and use OpenRefine, visit the OpenRefine documentation & guide pages.
Anaconda is a distribution of Python and R designed for scientific computing and intuitive plug-in support. One of the most popular Python desktop environments, Anaconda supports an incredible number of modules and plug-ins. For more information on Python, as well as a number of recommended books, please visit our Python Library Guide.
R Studio is a desktop environment for the R language, which excels at language processing and data visualization. R Studio supports plug-ins like TidyText for a number of tokenizing and NLP processes. You can learn more about R and RStudio, as well as find a number of recommended books, in our R Library Guide & our RStudio Library Guide.
VoyantTools is a user-friendly, web-based tool that serves as an excellent introduction to NLP and text mining. A user uploads documents or URLs to VoyantTools and it automatically outputs a statistical analysis of the text, including visualizations and trends in the language. VoyantTools can be used by researchers looking for a starting point on a text corpus, returning information of interest without a user creating a single line of code. For more information on it, consult the VoyantTools documentation.
Resource:
Rothwell, A., Way, A., & Youdale, R. (Eds.). (2024). Chapter 11 VoyantTools' Little Outing: How a Text Reading and Analysis Environment Can Help Literary Translators in Computer-assisted literary translation
Adobe Dreamweaver is a web development application supporting HTML, Java, CSS and other popular web codes. To start developing a website with Dreamweaver, visit Adobe’s tutorial and user guide. Note - an Adobe account is needed to access this application, however no payment is required to use it within PCL.
Eclipse provides a Dynamic Language Toolkit for integration by developers and researchers. They provide a cloud-based IDE for Java. For repositories on their DLTK, visit the Eclipse GitHub.
A popular, open-source replacement for the built-in notepad functionality of Windows. It supports a variety of popular coding languages and contains debugging features.
A client server application which serves GUI content to other networked machines. When used with software like PuTTY it can securely forward sessions to networked computers. More information can be found in the XMing X Server guides & manual.
An open-source, web-based, open-source e-book manager used for organizing collections, ingesting materials and backing up libraries. In addition, users can edit books within Calibre, even in proprietary Kindle formats. To get started using Calibre watch this video tour of Calibre or read the Calibre written user manual.
A program for designing books or published materials, especially those containing a large number of figures and diagrams. Developed from the original TeX program with the purpose of designing math and science publications, this typesetting program can be applied to other works as well. For more, see the Documentation and articles at MikTeX.org.
AVAnnotate is an open-source, browser-based program for creating and sharing annotations on audio or visual media. Such annotations can provide metadata and widen accessibility of audio-based archival content. Researchers and students might also utilize AVAnnotate to add context to AV documents. To start using it, visit the AVAnnotate quick start guide.
Example:
Comparison Project by Luke Sumpter and Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth
Adobe Bridge is a creative asset and collection manager, used to manage large collections of digital artifacts and edit and apply metadata. To learn how to use Adobe Bridge, visit the Adobe Bridge support and user manual page.
Adobe Illustrator is an imaging program for creating illustrations and vector images for artistic and graphic design applications. To start using Illustrator, visit Adobe’s tutorials and user guides.
Adobe InDesign is a tool for laying out and designing flyers and PDFs. Guides on using InDesign are provided by Adobe’s tutorials and user guides.
Adobe Lightroom is a photo editing tool for desktop environments. STS users can edit and color-correct their scanned documents in Lightroom Classic. To learn how to use the software, visit their Adobe Lightroom tutorials and user guide.
Adobe Media Encoder is a video editor that can ingest and output a wide variety of file types and video qualities. It features integration with Premier Pro to streamline video production and publication. Information on how to use the software can be found in the Adobe Media Encoder tutorials and user guide.
Adobe Photoshop is a popular image editor that can be used to touch up or composite images, or to create new ones. To get started using photoshop, see the Adobe Photoshop tutorials and user guide.
VLC is a media playback application supporting a wide range of audio and video file types. Plug-ins are available for optical media decoding and encoding new file types.
XnView is a tool for browsing, editing, and converting image files on a large scale, with support for over 500 formats. User guides and FAQs are maintained on the XnView wiki.
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