System Requirements
The Archivist requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7 to run. When you attempt to install The Archivist , it will check to see if you have the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. Note that it can take between 5-10 minutes to install the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, depending on bandwidth. Also, note that you may need to reboot after installing the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and you may need to return to website and click the install link again.
When you launch The Archivist, it will check to see if there is a new version available and, if there is, it will automatically update.
Using The Archivist
The key aspect to The Archivist is using Twitter Search. To learn more about creating Twitter Searches, read their documentation on search operators. Once you know what you want to search, simply enter it into The Archivist textbox. The Archivist will pull as many results as it can for that search, up to 1500 results, which is the current maximum allowed by Twitter at this time. Also, note that the search will only go back in time for a set amount, usually around 3-4 weeks. You can't get at tweets through Twitter Search that are older.
Once you have started a search, The Archivist will continue to monitor that search term while you leave it open, refreshing itself every ten minutes. You can save the results from your search and reopen it at a later time. Once you save the results to your file system, The Archivist will automatically save any new tweets that come in, so you only need to click save one time. If you would like to perform a different search, you will need to click "Reset" and enter a new term.
If you would like to have multiple searches going simultaneously, you need to launch multiple instances of The Archivist. Beware -- with too many instances of The Archivist open, you could get rate limited by Twitter.
If your search term has lots of Twitter traffic, you will probably want to leave The Archivist running, because there is a chance you will miss some tweets. For example, let's say you do a search, save the results, close The Archivist and then reopen that search the next day. If there have been more than 1500 tweets since the last time you ran the search, there will be a gap in your archive.
If you would like to see the Twitter homepage for a user of a given tweet, you can click their avatar, which will launch a browser that takes you to the person's Twitter homepage.
Data Analysis
The Archivist allows you to see a chart that shows tweets per day on a given search. You can toggle between the chart and the list of tweets by using the View Chart or View Tweets selection in the menu.
For deeper data analysis, there are two options.
The first option is to export The Archivist data to Excel. When you click Export To Excel, The Archivist will create a tab delimited text file which you can then open in Excel. Double-clicking the file won't open Excel; you will have to launch Excel and then open the text file from within Excel by looking for the file type .txt. You will then be prompted to import the file; just accept all the defaults and you should be good to go.
The second option is to do something with the .xml file that is the default way The Archivist saves files. The schema for the .xml is super simple and any programmer savvy with XML should be able to party on it pretty easily.