We are starting with my in-progress Google Sheet and will skip several steps of the Workflow in the interest of time. I will briefly demonstrate the corpus analysis toolkit AntConc for later exploration; only Google Sheets is needed for this workshop.
For this workshop, please make a copy of the Google Sheet for your work.
While not needed for the workshop here is the link to a Google Drive Folder of txt versions of the cookbooks
This workflow is inspired by The Data-Sitters Club
Students are welcome to use and modify the spreadsheet for non-commercial research purposes with attribution under this Creative Commons license
Workflow
Decide on initial cookbooks
Consider dates of cookbooks, look into relevant copyright considerations
I chose texts from Project Guttenburg that had been proofread after the texts had been through Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
Consider where you want to start your research, knowing it will likely change during the process.
Record what you expect to explore in the cookbooks
Use The Sifter to assist with cookbook decisions
Open the Plain Text version of each cookbook and copy and paste into a text editor, changing font color as needed, one at a time.
Create a Google Sheet, including a header row, freeze header row
Decide on Initial Column Headings, for this workshop I have set Column Headings based on my own research interests.
Create a food plan for yourself
Delete table of contents, title page, indices, and prefaces in the txt document
Record what gets deleted in a data handling document
Save as a .txt document in a dedicated, findable folder
Open each document, one at a time into AntConc. Explore file in AntConc
Note which cookbooks have more words and more unique terms
Navigate to the “Word List” tab and hit the “Start” button
Make sure the header of AntConc is set to 5000 and copy the “Word” and “Freq” columns to Google Sheet. Copy the “Word” column both to the “Original Term” and “Standardized Word “in the Google sheets
If needed, hit the green arrow button in AntConc and continue to copy and paste additional terms and frequency
Complete the Cookbook Title, Author, and Cookbook Year Columns in Spreadsheet if using these Headings
Add “Term Type” Column to Google Sheet, and set it to “Stop Word.”
Add more rows to Sheet as needed
Start thinking about Term Types
Once Term Types start to feel finalized consider creating dropdown menus
Notice any biases that are showing up in your Term Types
Set a column for “Further Research” and set to “No”
Start categorizing terms
Create standardized terms when stuck; for example, okra and ochre are both the standardized term okra
When stuck, exercise or find another way to clear your head
Create a Notes field to record frustrations
Create extra columns based on research interest
Start a Data Dictionary on a separate sheet
Return to cookbooks in AntConc and examine terms that need more research
Take a deep breath
Brainstorm about where to start on Pivot Tables
Record Your experiences throughout, especially what is causing you to become frustrated. These frustrations are generally a great starting place for further research. Use The Sifter and return to the cookbook texts in AntConc as needed.
Look at secondary sources to answer questions and explore frustrations
Start creating Pivot Tables
Google Sheet power users disregard this section and create Pivot Tables based on your own workflows
Note: I generally use Tableau Public for my research visualizations
Go to Insert Tab and scroll down to Pivot Table
Create a Pivot Table on a new Sheet
Set “Rows” as “Standardized Term”
Set “Columns” as “Cookbook”
Set “Frequency” to “Frequency”
Set “Filters” as “Fats” and use the dropdown menu to deselect “Blanks”
Select stat in the Pivot Table, not including the Grand Total
Click the chart button on the right side of the sheet ribbon
Consider what could be improved in the Chart
Edit the Pivot Table by clicking on the Edit button in the bottom right corner below the Pivot Table
Go to Chart Editor by clicking on the three buttons in the top left corner of the chart
Return to Google Sheet to Fix typos found (not for this workshop)
Explore the Chart Editors and Pivot Table Editor
Create your own charts
Frustration is a useful part of the process
Download any useful charts
Consider what further examination of the spreadsheet is needed to explore questions raised by the data
Consider what additional research can assist in exploring questions
For my research, I needed to check where pineapple was printed in the cookbooks as “pineapple” vs. “pine apple”