Distant Reader - subject-customsAdministration-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 12 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 19,403 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 1,616 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 80. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

text, parliament, committee, english, tcp, early, great, customes, shall, commons, ordinance, books, england, london, many, navy, online, eebo, time, officers, work, ships, encoded, persons, due, wales, hundred, one, assessed, xml, phase, king, goods, customs, merchants, houses, images, house, duties, support, page, thomason, image, severall, may, transcribed, thousand, markup, lords, payment

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A declaration in vindication of the honour of the Parliament, and of the committee of the navy and customes; against all traducers: concerning the managing of the navy and customes, and many other weighty affaires of state: faithfully relating what strength of shipping have been yearly employed for the guarding of the seas, and what moneys arising by the revenue of the customes, excise of flesh and salt, and other receits, have been applyed to that use. The rules by which they have been all managed; and a just account how the moneys have been disposed. By Giles Grene, a member of the Honourable House of Commons., Die Mercurij 8. Februar. 1642. An ordinance of the Lords and Commons in Parliament. For the better levying and receiving of moneyes assessed by vertue of the late ordinance of 29. Novemb. 1642., and An ordinance of the Lords and Commons, assembled in Parliament, inhibiting the importation of currans..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

english books, early english, books online, great britain, textual changes, creation partnership, text creation, early works, page images, mona logarbo, customs administration, images scanned, iv tiff, encoded edition, commercial purposes, tcp assigned, image set, proquest page, asking permission, online text, xml conversion, work described, financial support, text transcribed, creative commons, encoded text, tiff page, batch review, markup reviewed, pfs batch, without asking, institutions providing, providing financial, pretended ordinance, bit group, gap elements, towns corporate, merchants ships, kings ships, eng customs, page image, stationer meant, based collaborative, standardized format, six hundred, notre dame, short title, thousand six, enrichments aim, collaborative curation

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Whereas we are informed, that in many cities and towns corporate within this kingdom, greater customers, tolls and duties than are really due, have been of late exacted in right of the said corporations, upon goods imported or exportd into or out of the said cities and towns corporate, to the great prejudice of His Majestie his customers, the decay of trade, and the discouragement of merchants ... by the Lord Lieutenant and Council, Essex. A proclamation for discovering and preventing the many fraudulent practices of under-officers, and others in stealing His Majesties customs, and Officers fees for Englishmen as they are receiued in the port of London, set downe vnder the hands for the fermors, comptrollers, collectors and searchers of the custom-house there: for a rule and president to euery custome house in any port of his Maiesties dominions, according to the table of fees, signed by the late L. Treasourer, the Earle of Dorset, and the then Barons of the Exchequer..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

tcp, parliament, king, commons, town, ordinance, navy, march, majesties, customes, committee, city

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be text, and Chiverton Mayor. Tuesday the eighth day of December 1657. An order of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, against concealing and colouring the goods of aliens and foreyners. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

text, work, time, books, xml, persons, images, page, image, works, money, payment, day, goods, changes, transcription, ordinance, yeare, texts, support, customes, order, keying, eebo, edition, use, elements, charge, summes, person, moneys, year, users, purposes, power, pounds, markup, end, duties, characters, care, others, affaires, administration, ships, iiij, hands, annotation, terms, review

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

be, is, have, been, are, was, were, said, encoded, assessed, has, according, did, made, given, based, aim, set, received, had, do, being, -, taken, providing, make, sent, scanned, reviewed, performed, owned, modified, making, give, edited, distributed, described, copied, coded, co, assigned, asking, take, published, ordered, found, assembled, signed, receive, printed

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

parliament, committee, tcp, d., commons, customes, england, london, navy, english, text, wales, thomason, ordinance, merchants, oxford, kingdome, customs, lords, officers, house, transcribed, lord, ships, houses, king, great, britain, proquest, phase, partnership, creation, city, state, custome, wing, tei, online, eebo, currans, books, act, mona, logarbo, god, duties, collectors, charles, vs, universal

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

their, they, it, our, i, his, them, we, my, he, him, us, me, themselves, its, her, you

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, such, early, great, many, same, english, due, textual, available, first, late, own, severall, keyboarded, financial, commercial, honourable, corporate, present, tractable, suitable, standardized, standard, seekest, proofread, professional, enriched, easier, digital, collaborative, true, pretended, last, known, just, further, full, 17th, whole, weighty, unnaturall, particular, much, maritime, least, illegible, greater, general, twentieth

not, so, then, online, more, early, as, well, even, above, hereby, out, never, late, ever, very, up, in, fully, therefore, much, most, linguistically, forth, computationally, yet, now, whatsoever, respectively, otherwise, especially, too, thereof, thereby, there, likewise, here, further, formerly, faithfully, also, yearly, therein, only, usually, still, really, onely, often, henceforth

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.