Complex Data, Simple Tools: An Introduction to Text Retrieval Packages

Before the advent of personal computers, qualitative researchers could often be found "waste" deep in typed interview transcripts. Dealing with these transcripts often meant hours of searching for a particular passage or pattern. For many, Uttle has changed — except that the transcripts are now word-processed instead of typewritten. But precisely because they are word-processed, these transcripts open up new possibilities for computeraided retrieval and analysis.