# Digital Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Arabic Textbooks
## 1 Introduction  
In the past few decades, digital tools have become increasingly important for supporting in-depth research. However, in order to unlock the dormant potential of digital technologies to improve interdisciplinary scientific processes, the exact requirements of humanist researchers need to be scrutinized and given precise solutions. One example of such an operating principle has been applied by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media1 Georg Eckert Institute (GEI). The Institute promotes and supports research into textbooks and educational media from a historical and cultural studies perspective. Furthermore, it provides several research infrastructures, such as its renowned research library with a collection of international school textbooks, and its various dedicated and customized digital information services. The GEI also employs and implements research infrastructures to support Digital Humanities (DH) researchers ([[http://gei-digital.gei.de](http://gei-digital.gei.de)]([http://gei-digital.gei.de](http://gei-digital.gei.de)) (accessed on 3 July 2022)). Automatic image and text analysis, linguistic annotation of texts, and data visualization are digital methods that allow textbook researchers to investigate diverse questions and document their research process. Digital tools and data analysis expand the researcher's options when examining or studying a particular subject. Combining digital methods with other research tools in a specific discipline enables humanists to explore information and answer research questions. The use of digital tools has the potential to transform research, offering novel possibilitiesfor the creation, analysis, and sharing of knowledge. As a specific genre, textbooks lend themselves to multiple text analysis (deductive and inductive) and comparisons in terms of subjects, historical periods, states, regions, or languages, which employ quantitative and qualitative modes of analysis and description and can therefore be facilitated by digital tools in a profound way. Digital tools generally provide very useful functionalities to annotate (code) different features of the text, for example, using different colours and underlining styles. Furthermore, they allow users to add comments, key words, codes, or memos to relevant text passages, images, or whole documents through sustainable and collaborative annotation. The increased availability of digitized texts and digital resources accessible through digital technologies brings challenges and opportunities with regards to textual analysis. The literary historian and theorist [PERSON] approached these by differentiating between close and distant reading. Close reading refers to the detailed analysis of a text or corpus, which can follow a diverse set of methods [1; 2]. These analysis techniques include, for example, stylometric analysis, which aims to identify the style of an author or genre by comparing it to others, identifying and documenting the characteristic traits that distinguish it. Distant reading, on the other hand, is an innovative approach to literary analysis introduced by [PERSON] at the beginning of the twenty-first century in the context of digital transformation [3; 4; 5]. He adopts a quantitative approach to literary studies, arguing that thousands of documents may need to be analysed in order to get an accurate understanding of what comprises a literary genre. Following this, a combination of the close and distant reading approaches has been developed [6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11]. The Edumeres Toolbox that this paper describes in the following pages responds to the fundamental needs of today's DH researchers and provides all the functionality needed to manage a digital library through a web application. The system also provides specific functionalities to allow researchers to carry out close reading vs. digital close reading, and distant reading visualizations, which are characterized by quantitative and qualitative methods [12].