Literature & Film Sources
- HathiTrust This link opens in a new windowBucknell University is a member of the HathiTrust Digital Library, a collaborative effort among libraries and research institutions to collect, preserve, and provide access to a comprehensive archive of materials. Log in by selecting Bucknell from the list of institutions to access millions of full-text public domain, open access, and government materials. Guide to Using HathiTrust
- WikiSourceA free library with collections of literary works (and more) in dozens of languages. To download a work as .txt file, use the Download button on a work's page, select "Looking for a different format?", and choose Plain text in the file format menu.
- Internet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Among their holdings are digitized versions of over 44 million books and texts. Guide to Using the Internet Archive
- Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a library of over 70,000 free ebooks, many of which have .txt versions available for download.
- The Script LabFeatures thousands of movie scripts, including those from recent films. You will need to create a free account to download scripts.
- BBC Script LibraryScripts from BBC TV, Radio and Film.
Newspaper & Archival Sources
- Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearch the New York Times (1851 - 2015), Wall Street Journal (1889 - 2001), Washington Post (1877- 2002), and the L.A Times (1881 - 1995) Historical Newspaper databases and more.
- Adam Matthew Explorer This link opens in a new windowAccess millions of pages of primary source collections across the entire portfolio of Adam Matthew Digital, spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries. You'll find award-winning digital resources spanning the social sciences and humanities, developed in collaboration with leading libraries and archives
- Times (London) Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowFull-text content from The Times (London), including headlines, advertisements, and images, from 1785 to 2019. The archive contains coverage of topics including history, politics, social and cultural history, law, genealogy and criminology.
- New York Times Online This link opens in a new windowNews from The New York Times newspaper. Requires personal registration. See our guide for account activation instructions.
Other Resources
- KaggleSign in with your Google account. Has some text datasets; search using a broad keyword (i.e., speeches, religion), and then filter by Dataset File Type to .txt.
- GovInfoFull text of thousands of U.S. government documents, including hearings, speeches, and reports.
- Google Dataset SearchA specialized Google search for finding datasets. Use the Download Format filter to limit your results to text datasets.
Tips for Text Wrangling
If you are copying text directly from a website to paste into a plain text file, using the Reader View in your web browser can make this easier. This view strips away all the "junk" on a webpage and leaves you with the core text on the page. Reader View is a built in option in Safari [look for the icon directly to the left of the URL bar], Firefox [look for the icon at the far right end of the URL bar], and Microsoft Edge [look for the icon at the far right end of the URL bar]. An extension is available for Chrome.
If you are working with PDFs of text that you need to convert to .txt, you can use Adobe Acrobat (installed on all lab computers on campus) to do those conversions. This guide from Rowan University outlines the process. Note: Born digital PDFs will convert much more easily, and are usable in Voyant without the need to convert them. Scanned PDFs are more challenging to convert and work with -- you can ask Dr. Jakacki, Claire, or Carrie for help with these.
Subject Librarian
Research Help Area, Room 112
570.577.1068
carrie.pirmann@bucknell.edu
Office Hours:
Monday - Friday, 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM