1b.iii Previous studies of humanities users
Scholarly inquiry employing digital resources in the humanities is a well-researched area. As Dalton and Charnigo (2004) show, in recent years there has been a flood of literature about scholars’ information needs and seeking behaviours. Although useful recent work on humanities scholars has been done by Green (2000), Talja and Maula (2003) and Ellis and Oldman (2005), much of the literature tends to conflate information seeking and information needs in relation to humanities scholars.
The earliest work on humanities users was on their information needs and patterns of use, and it is only very recently that research has been conducted into their actual behaviour in digital environments. Seminal work done by Stone (1982) and later by Watson-Boone (1994) showed that humanities users need a wide range of resources, in terms of their age and type. This is still true in a digital environment, where humanities users continue to need printed materials and manuscripts, the latter implying older materials than those generally used by scientists (British Academy, 2005). Humanities scholars also rely on face-to-face information gathering, from colleagues and at conferences. They may also use personal collections of knowledge built up over years of study. They do not necessarily expect to create new data or discover new facts, but reinterpret and re-express ideas, where the expression itself is as important as the discovery (Barrett, 2005).
A major theme of the literature about humanities users is that they are not like those in the sciences or social sciences, although many systems designers of electronic resources have assumed that they are (Bates, 2002). Humanities scholars are much more likely to use what Ellis has called "chaining"; that is, they proceed by following references that they have found in other literature (Ellis & Oldman, 2005; Green, 2000). Despite the hypertextual nature of the web, however, such activity is seldom well supported in online environments (Bates, 2002). It is also at odds with keyword queries that tend to be the norm for information systems. Oddly, this has been seen as evidence that humanities researchers’ techniques are somehow impoverished (Chu, 1999). Yet as long ago as the mid-1980s Wiberley showed that humanities scholars constructed searches using well defined terms, but these terms were different from those used by scientists: for example, humanities searches were more likely to include names of places or people (Wiberley, 1983 & 1988). Bates’ work and that of Dalton and Charnigo (2004) and Whitmire (2002) has also shown that those humanities scholars who use digital resources tend to be demanding of their quality, and are capable of constructing complex search strategies, given appropriate training. Lehmann and Renfro (1991) and Wiberley (2000) suggest that humanities scholars are receptive to technology as long as it demonstrates adequate savings in time or effort.
If we are to design an e-book that users may regard as fit for their research purposes, then it follows that we must understand what humanities scholars do in digital environments, what kind of resources they need, and even more importantly perhaps what makes humanities scholars decline to use resources. These questions are not well understood: except for the work of Bates et al., on the Getty project (Siegfried et al., 1993), very few people have studied what humanities scholars do when they carry out research in an online environment. There is even less concern with what they are doing offline and how connections may be made between the two. Some of these questions are being addressed by researchers involved in the HCI-Book project. However, a great deal more research remains to be done on such areas before we may be confident of designing an e-book that will be of genuine utility to the humanities researcher.
In thinking about how best to conduct a study of humanities users, we have benefited from the experience of two ongoing, UK-based projects. Both of them list Claire Warwick of our research team as a principal or co-investigator.
The UCIS project (User Centred Information Search in context) looks at the ways in which users interact with digital libraries. UCIS is studying humanities users and their interactions with information in physical and virtual environments. An important facet of this work is that users are studied in as naturalistic a context as possible, so as to gain a fuller understanding of the nature of their information work (Warwick et al., 2005). Humanities academics have been interviewed and observed undertaking their usual research in both physical and digital libraries. The knowledge gained from this is being used to derive requirements to the construction of alternative interfaces to the Greenstone digital library system.
The LAIRAH project conducts research into levels of use of digital resources in the arts and humanities in the UK. The project ran workshops in which it investigated user reactions to different digital resources, both widely used and neglected.
Both LARIAH and UCIS have found that humanities researchers have very sophisticated information skills, and complex mental models of their physical information environment, although they find these much more difficult to apply to the digital domain (Makri et al., forthcoming). They are very aware of the affordances, advantages, and problems of various information technologies. Scholars are concerned about accuracy and ease of use for both physical and electronic resources, and require as much information as possible about how such resources are constructed and what they contain (Warwick et al., 2006).
LARIAH research in particular found that users expect very high standards of resource content and interfaces, and are easily deterred from using digital resources. Anything that makes a resource difficult to understand — a confusing name, a challenging interface, data that must be downloaded — will deter them from using a resource. Humanities researchers also find that the pleasure of interacting with the materials that they read, whether in physical or digital space, is an important element of scholarship (Blandford et al. forthcoming). We therefore face a challenge of designing an e-book that is not only functional and appropriate for its scholarly purpose, but that, if possible, is pleasant to use, and at all costs does nothing to deter schools from using it.
We are also aware that many of those who have been surveyed about their use of digital resources are, to some extent, enthusiasts for the medium. The research for both UCIS and LAIRAH suggests that a significant number of scholars do not make significant use of specialist digital resources (beyond the generic information resources described above). It is therefore important that our research aim to survey such light users and non-users to determine what factors might deter them from using an e-book. This will allow us to gain the fullest possible picture of the user community, not simply the early adopting enthusiasts who are likely to volunteer for studies on digital resources.
In addition to the above-mentioned projects, two major Canadian undertakings have influenced our thinking. Both TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research) and ECO (Early Canadiana Online/Notre Memoire En Ligne) have investigated how humanities researchers use online tools, whether text-specific or not. Two major findings emerged. First, scholars are most concerned with accomplishing their task; the interface must present things in the context of tasks that they might wish to accomplish, rather than of the tools that might do the job, or the technical details of the text that they might be using. Secondly, graduate students and more senior scholars behave differently and have different needs. This highlights the need for the HCI-Book project to identify different categories of users, in order that we meet their needs; these categories may be more fine-grained than we expect.
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