MA Training
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
IT in Humanities postgraduate work
The objectives of this class:
 To share our experience of IT
 To identify gaps in our knowledge of IT resources
 To identify sources of help and advice
 To encourage an interest in the use of IT as an important transferable skill
 To encourage a critical approach to the use of IT as a means, not an end
 To address the problems of working on a number of different machines / platforms
1 Backups and portability

Where and how to back up
o Settings in programs
o NOT on the same drive
o Memory sticks, floppy discs, zip drive, CDs, DVDs, server (ftp: FTPExplorer
(www.ftpx.com/: free to students and faculty); FileZilla
(filezilla.sourceforge.net/: free)).
o Automatic backup: IOmegaWare (www.iomega-europe.com/: free);
SyncBackSE (www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse-features.html:
$30)
o File compression (.zip (WinZip: www.winzip.com/: $29.95), .tar
(www.gnu.org/software/tar/: free), .rar (www.rarlab.com/: €29.95), etc)

Portability
o .rtf (R[ich] T[ext] F[ormat])
o .pdf (P[ortable] D[ocument] F[ormat]: Adobe Acrobat (www.adobe.co.uk:
£287.88), PDF Factory
(www.fineprint.com/products/pdffactory/index.html: $49.95), Open
Office (www.openoffice.org/: free)). (Remember that if you have special
fonts in your document you will need to embed these in the .pdf file.)
o .csv (C[omma] S[eparated] V[alues])
o .txt and ASCII (A[merican] S[tandard] C[ode] for I[nformation] I[nterchange].
How to find the ASCII number for a given character (see, for example,
www.petefreitag.com/cheatsheets/ascii-codes/). ASCII has 127
characters; Extended ASCII has 255.
2 Word processing (MS Word, Open Office)

Preparing an essay or dissertation
o Styles and formatting, seeing all the information
o Foreign languages: special characters and keyboards
 Keystroke shortcuts (in MS Word for PC, é is CTRL+’+e)
 Copy from Character Map (in MS Word for PC Insert - Symbol)or, if
on-line, from french.typeit.org/, etc.
 ALT + ASCII code (é is ALT 0233)
~
 Very special characters: how to get q,
a, etc. Use the Eq field from
Insert - Field - Eq; this also deals with“ brackets, boxes, etc., e.g.:
Chris Pountain
Last printed 08/03/16
MA Training
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film


o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
1
2
5
3
Even more special character sets: special fonts (e.g. : this
one, SILDoulosIPA, can be downloaded free from www.sil.org).
Foreign language keyboards, e.g.
are obtained on a PC via Control Panel - Regional and Language
Options - Languages - Details.
 AutoText (in MSWord, Insert - AutoText)
Tabs and Tables
Headers and Footers, Page numbers
Footnotes and Endnotes
Spellcheckers and Grammar/Style checkers (and switching off default
settings)
Outline view
Diagrams and Pictures (in MSWord, Insert - Picture). Charts, Organization
Charts are also available here.
Indexing (in MSWord, Insert - Reference - Index and Tables). Tables of
Contents, and Cross-Referencing are also available here.
Annotations (in MSWord, Insert - Comment)
Revisions (in MSWord, Tools - Compare and Merge Documents)
3 Spreadsheets and databases (MS Excel, Open Office, MS Access (not included in MS
Office Educational edition), Filemaker Pro, EndNote (now free at QM))

Managing a bibliography
o Planning a database: fields
o Getting and converting information
 On-line electronic sources: zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/, copac.ac.uk/,
www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/index.html

There is a useful guide to database searching techniques at
www.lib.gla.ac.uk/Docs/Guides/searching.html

EndNote allows direct connection to ZETOC and other Z39.50compliant services.
o Moving between Word Processor and Database
Chris Pountain
Last printed 08/03/16
MA Training
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
4 Pictures (Corel (PaintShop Pro) (www.corel.co.uk: £296 (£89)), Adobe Photoshop
(Elements) (www.adobe.co.uk: £569 (£57)), The Gimp (www.gimp.org: free))


Capturing pictures
o Camera
o Scanner
Understanding about pixels and resolution
5 Analysing texts (WordSmith Tools (www.lexically.net/wordsmith/index.html: £50),
MonoConc and ParaConc (www.athel.com/mono.html: $85/$95), Conc (for Mac)
(www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software.asp?id=9: free)


Where to find electronic texts
How to create electronic texts
o Keyboard input
o Scanning and O[ptical]C[haracter] R[ecognition]
o (Voice input - not recommended!)
6. Making a presentation (MS Powerpoint)

The pros and cons of Powerpoint
Chris Pountain
Last printed 08/03/16