MDL Tutorials

To get started with intermediate R, enroll in this Intermediate R quercus course here. To enroll, you will need to use your UTORid login. This course consists of demonstration videos. By enrolling in this course, you can keep track of your progress! If you are a member of the public and you do not have a UTORid login, you can access the videos in the following guide below. 

Beginner to intermediate level excel tutorial. Guiding you through many of the excel tools available including: data types, filtering, transposing, formulas, formulas, functions, nested functions, charts, and pivot tables.  

Constellate is a browser-based tool for creating datasets from collections, such as JSTOR, and then teaches and facilitates text analysis on those datasets.

Return to the main Gale Digital Scholar Lab tutorial

Here is how to collaborate between users in the Gale Digital Scholar Lab using the Workspace and Notes features. This allows for a shared workspace and options for documenting your steps.

Python is a simple programming language that is popular for being easy to learn to read, write, and understand. You can use Python for automating repetitive tasks like cleaning data, creating data visualizations, analyzing data, conducting complex statistical calculations, or even building machine learning algorithms. Its ease of use and versatility means that many tools have been built on top of Python, but being able to explore those requires a good foundation and understanding of the language itself first!

UofT currently subscribes to NVivo 12. Consult our NVivo software license page to request a license key. Consult our getting started guide for NVivo 12 for tutorials, resources, and workshop recordings to help you get started using the software.

If you have an audio or video file that you need to get transcribed, this page describes some options to consider. But keep in mind, though, that none of these options (including NVivo transcription) provides a 100% perfectly accurate transcript. You will always have to go back in and correct your transcript.

This page provides an overview and tips for working as a team using NVivo.

This tutorial will help you get up and running querying the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) Patent PostgreSQL Database. It will cover accessing the high performance computing environment, querying the database via SQL statements and from within a python script, and downloading the results of the query.

You will need a Compute Canada account with the proper credentials to access this database. If you haven’t done so already, you should first follow the instructions to get your account set up.

Note: This tutorial is intended for Windows users. If you are using a Mac, check out this tutorial instead.

This tutorial will help you get up and running querying the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) Patent PostgreSQL Database. It will cover accessing the high performance computing environment, querying the database via SQL statements and from within a python script, and downloading the results of the query.

You will need a Compute Canada account with the proper credentials to access this database. If you haven’t done so already, you should first follow the instructions to get your account set up.

Note: This tutorial is intended for Mac users. If you are using Windows, check out this tutorial instead.

Learn the basics of GIS with open source software, QGIS (https://qgis.org). This tutorial/workshop is made up of three modules.

• Module 1. Getting started
• Module 2. Making a map using layouts
• Module 3. Manipulating geospatial datasets

Download the datasets used for this workshop at this location: https://maps.library.utoronto.ca/workshops/QGIS/2022/QGIS.zip

Note that while the examples shown in this tutorial were captured using the windows version of QGIS, all modules and operations can be completed using the linux or mac OS version of QGIS.

For a gentle and thorough introduction to R, enroll in this Introduction to R quercus course here. To enroll, you will need to use your UTORid login. This course consists of demonstration video, activity and quizzes. By enrolling in this course, you can keep track of your progress! If you are a member of the public and you do not have a UTORid login, you can access the videos in the following guide below. 

This is a beginner level tutorial for NVivo 12 for Mac. The goal of this tutorial is to learn about the basic features in NVivo that will allow you to organize and analyze qualitative data. Part 1 will go over the basics of navigating the NVivo interface, importing data, and coding with nodes. Part 2 will explore the different types of queries you can run in NVivo. If you already have a grasp of the basics and are just interested in learning about queries, you can jump right to Part 2.

This tutorial outlines the steps taken in the demonstration during the live workshop on an Introduction to Data Visualization Using Tableau Desktop. This is a companion tutorial, but can also be used as a stand-alone introduction to Tableau Desktop.

This is a beginner level tutorial for NVivo 12 for Windows. The goal of this tutorial is to learn about the basic features in NVivo that will allow you to organize and analyze qualitative data. Part 1 will go over the basics of navigating the NVivo interface, importing data, and coding with nodes. Part 2 will explore the different types of queries you can run in NVivo. If you already have a grasp of the basics and are just interested in learning about queries, you can jump right to Part 2.

SimplyAnalytics is a web-based data visualization application that can be used to create simple thematic maps and support analyses of socio-demographic data. This tutorial introduces SimplyAnalytics and its capabilities with the help of videos produced by our colleagues at UTSC.

ArcGIS Pro is a desktop GIS software developed by Esri and is intended to replace ArcMap. 

ArcGIS Online is a web-based mapping software that allows you to build, share, and access interactive web maps.

ArcGIS StoryMaps is an online storytelling tool that allows users to craft and publish powerful narratives using maps.

The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) is the research arm of HathiTrust. It develops tools and resources that enable text or computational analysis of the HathiTrust corpus. This corpus or digital library includes over 10 million volumes (mostly books and journals), 3 million of which are in the public domain. It covers 400 languages and publication dates from 1500 to the present day, representing a broad variety of subjects.

Infographics are a type of data visualization. They are usually a mixture of text and images, but they are graphic heavy, often only visualize a small amount of data, and have specific goals. Those goals are normally to inform or persuade through storytelling. They are often shared on websites and social media for marketing purposes, but they are becoming more popular in a variety of situations to convey your data and message to your audience in a more unique and appealing way.

ProQuest TDM Studio is a web platform for running text analyses on thousands of ProQuest materials, including but not limited to, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses and the New York Times. 

The Gale Digital Scholar Lab is a platform that allows users to discover and create collections of digitized texts from the Gale Historical Collections, run a variety of textual analysis on them, and visualize the resulting data.

Gephi is an open-source network analysis and visualization program that allows users to analyze and display relationships between individuals, groups, and other entities in a network.