The CDH Research Software Lab has added all print editions of the U-Blad to the online text and data mining tool I-Analyzer.

The U-Blad served as Utrecht University’s (UU) independent magazine from 1969 to 2010. Launched on 5 September 1969, under the title U utrechtse universitaire reflexen, it was later renamed the U-Blad in 1974. This title remained until the university decided to transition the magazine to a digital format, a move that – despite loud protests – led to the eventual discontinuation of the U-Blad. In April 2010, DUB was launched as its digital successor and remains UU’s magazine today.

The independent U-Blad offered a colourful account of university happenings, city life, and student culture through articles, photos, and cartoons. To preserve this history, DUB collaborated with the University Library to scan all past volumes. By making the U-Blad’s print editions from 1969 to 2010 available in I-Analyzer, all researchers and students interested can now easily explore these texts.

About I-Analyzer

Text and data mining (TDM) simplifies the exploration of large datasets (or corpora), making it easier to identify patterns and relationships. TDM tool I-Analyzer is geared toward the pre-analysis phase, allowing researchers and students to conduct full-text searches to quickly locate relevant documents. Users can also apply a multitude of filters, create visualizations to understand broader trends within a corpus, and export selected data subsets for further in-depth analysis in other software programs.

I-Analyzer is open-source software, freely available and primarily intended for academic research and higher education. The tool is continuously developed and maintained in-house at the Research Software Lab of UU’s Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH). Work on I-Analyzer began in 2017 to address the increasing demand, particularly among Social Sciences and Humanities researchers, for an accessible tool to facilitate preliminary text analysis.

Other corpora available in I-Analyzer

Also available after login with UU employee or student account (Solis-id):

Working with I-Analyzer

Would you like to get to know the functionalities and corpora available in I-Analyzer? The CDH offers tailormade workshops for groups of seven people or more. Or would you like to have your own dataset uploaded into the tool? For possibilities, please contact cdh@uu.nl.

Have you used I-Analyzer before? Are there certain features or corpora you would like to see in I-Analyzer? Then please fill out this user survey to let us know how we can make I-Analyzer work better for you.