Bill Caraher | 

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been using Google’s Gemini Notebook LM function to do some remote reading of the first 25 issues of North Dakota Quarterly (1910-1934). This amounts to just under 8500 pages of text. I’m looking to write a short article on these volumes, and I’m trying to come up with a way to complement my skimming of these volumes with some more systematic method to extract information from the contents. 

With that as context, I thought I’d share some of my preliminary work. 

First, I asked Gemini to compile a list of 10 themes from the content of the NDQ volumes. I required that each article must have at least three of the themes present. Here is the list of themes: (1) Education, (2) Social Studies, (3) Economics, (4) Governance & Law, (5) Physical Sciences & Engineering, (6) Biological & Health Sciences, (7) Literature & Arts, (8) History, (9) Regional Focus (North Dakota), and (10) Research & Scholarship. The last theme is a bit of a cheat since Gemini identified it in all the articles, but I’ll give it a pass. The themes in general derive less from the content of the articles themselves and more from the occasional statements regarding the purpose of the Quarterly Journal which was broadly to amplify the work of UND faculty.

Here is a link to a Google Sheet that reflects its thematic analysis. 

That said, these themes reflect the broadly modernist inclination of the magazine and this is consistent with both regionalist views (sometimes known as “Midwestern Modernism”) and the ambition of the university and more broadly the leading thinkers in the state and region.

The thematic analysis draws on 368 articles from NDQ. I also asked Gemini to compile a list of all the articles that appeared in these volumes. It produced a list of 479 articles. I’m not sure about this discrepancy, but it is something that I’ll need to suss out.

You can see the bibliography here.

Finally, I know that some of my colleagues are starting to use the NDQ archive in their classes. One of the queries that they’ll put to the text is a geographic one. So I asked the Gemini Notebook what North Dakota towns appear in NDQ? I also asked Gemini to add the number of times a place appeared. 

Gemini did a serviceable job. It seemed to include counties as well as towns in the list:

• Grand Forks (251): county and town

• Fargo (77)

• Devils Lake (70)

• Bismarck (70)

• Minot (65)

• Hebron (53)

• Valley City (15)

• Jamestown (13)

• Pembina (10)

• Williston (7)

• Wahpeton (8)

• Grafton (6)

• St. Thomas (5)

• LaMoure (4)

• Mayville (4)

• Griggs (4) [County]

• Traill (4) [County]

• Richland (4) [County]

• Dunn (4) [County]

• Hettinger (4)

• Dickinson (4)

• Towner (3)

• Cooperstown (3)

• Bowesmont (3)

• Bowman (3)

• Rolette (3): City and County

• Mandan (3)

• Walsh (3) [County]

• Edmore (3)

• Hatton (3)

• Webster (2)

• Inkster (2)

• Antler (2)

• Hillsboro (2)

• Ellendale (2)

• Hope (2)

• Neche (2)

• Park River (2)

• Eddy (2)

• Oakes (2)

• McIntosh (2) [County]

• Billings (2) [County]

• Oliver (2)

• Burleigh (2) [County]

• Grant (2) [County]

• Kidder (2) [County]

• Logan (2) [County]

• McKenzie (2) [County]

• Mercer (2)

• Renville (2)

• Sheridan (2)

• Sioux (2) [County]

• Slope (2) [County]

• Stark (2) [County]

• Wells (2)

• Williams (2) [County]

• Mountrail (2) [County]

• Morton (2) [County]

• Foster (2) [County]

• Benson (2) [County]

• Divide (2) [County]

• Christine (1)

• Emerado (1)

• Courtney (1)

• Hoople (1)

• Crosby (1)

• Milnor (1)

• Dunn Center (1)

• Forman (1)

• Fessenden (1)

• Granville (1)

• McArthur (1)

• Minnewaukan (1)

• Medora (1)

• Rugby (1)

• New Rockford (1)

• Goodrich (1)

• Sarles (1)

• Drayton (1)

• Huff (1)

• Berwick (1)

• Bisbee (1)

• Cando (1)

• Cleveland (1)

• Lidgerwood (1)

• Rock Lake (1)

• Bowbells (1)

• Grandin (1)

• Glasston (1)

• Hannaford (1)

• Edgeley (1)

• Dazey (1)

• Lakota (1)

• Ashlen (1)

• Forest River (1)

• Regan (1)

• Starkweather (1)

• Oberon (1)

• Mountain (1)

• Enderlin (1)

• Mott (1)

• Marmarth (1)

• Haley (1)

• Richardton (1)

• Stevenson (1)

• Golden Valley (1)

• Burke (1) [County]

• Pierce (1)

• Arvilla (1)

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Bill Caraher is the editor of NDQ.