1. Mapping the use of digital sources
amongst Humanities scholars in the
Netherlands
Max Kemman MSc, Martijn Kleppe MA,
dr. Stef Scagliola, Renske Jongbloed
MA, prof. dr. Henri Beunders
@MaxJ_K
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2. State of affairs
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3. The more, the merrier?
PhD student, History, 24
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4. The more, the merrier?
“If there is an easier way, I will
do it another way. So I won’t
go on the Internet to search.
There’s so much, there is so
much information. So you can
better call someone who
knows than search it for
yourself.”
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5. State of affairs
• In the past decade we have seen an explosion
of available online databases and tools
• In development of databases for digital
humanities, questions are
– How do academics currently use databases?
– What do academics wish from future databases?
– How should we educate academics to become
digital humanity scholars?
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6. Research questions
1. To what extent are online databases used?
2. Which subdisciplines use digital sources
more and which less?
3. Which search techniques are applied?
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7. Academic user research
• Interviews
• Survey
– Netherlands and Belgium
– Online
– N=294
– 15-20 minutes
– Lots of data (250 variables in SPSS)
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8. Who did the survey?
• Position
– Largest group: PhD student
– But good distribution over
other positions
• Age
– Largest group: 25-34
– But good distribution over
other age groups
• Discipline
– Largest group: History
– Other disciplines: Social Studies, Mass
Communications, Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy
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9. Research questions
1. To what extent are online databases used?
2. Which subdisciplines use digital sources
more and which less?
3. Which search techniques are applied?
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10. Which of the following digital data do
you use professionally?
Very often
Often
Text (books, news, etc.)
Scholarly publications
Regularly
Statistical data
Sometimes
Numerical
Digitized
objects
Images
Never
Audio
Video
data
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11. Differences between disciplines
‘Traditional’ digital data Modern digital data
Images: Literature, History Video: Mass Communications
Digitized objects: Literature, History, Audio: Linguistics
Philosophy
Numerical data: Social Studies, Linguistics
Statistical data: Social Studies, Mass
Communications, Linguistics
Overall: Literature, History, Philosophy Overall: Mass Communications,
Linguistics, Social Studies
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12. Don’t
Sometimes
Very often
Often
Regularly
Never
know it
Google
Google Images
Google Scholar
YouTube
JSTOR
Uitzending Gemist
KB
Flickr
EBSCO
Nationaal Archief
Web of Knowledge
Yahoo!
Bing
Academia.nl
or databases do you use?
Europeana
Scopus
Microsoft Academic Search
Which of the following search engines
EUscreen
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Arkyves

13. When do you trust a search engine or
database?
250
Number of participants
200
150
100
50
0
Experienced Expertise High quality Understand Heard about Broad range Read about
it behind it selection its inner it of results it online
workings
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14. Research questions
1. To what extent are online databases used?
– Mostly text-based data usage, followed by images
– Google dominant in every way
– Trust is based mostly on experience
2. Which subdisciplines use digital sources more and
which less?
– ‘Traditional’ digital data (Images, Digitized objects):
• Literature, History and Philosophy
– ‘Modern’ digital data (Video, Audio, Statistical and
Numerical data)
• Social studies, Mass Communications, Linguistics
3. Which search techniques are applied?
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15. Search techniques
1. Keywords 4,75
2. Advanced search 3,36
3. Related terms 2,52
4. Boolean 2,42
5. Browsing subject
categories 2,29
6. Filters 2,19
7. Thesaurus 1,87
8. Visualization 1,22
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16. (Audiovisual) search behaviour
• Academics are “surfers” with a non-specific
goal in mind
• Academics are positively confident in their
ability to use search tools
– Respondents below 45 years are more confident
than those above 45 years
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17. Research questions
1. To what extent are online databases used?
2. Which subdisciplines use digital sources
more and which less?
3. Which search techniques are applied?
– Most important are ease and speed
– Search behaviour: younger academics (below 45
years) are more confident in their use of
(audiovisual) search tools
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18. Conclusion
• We see that
– Text is the dominant medium
– Google is the dominant search system
– Google dominates search techniques
– Trust in a search engine or database is based
primarily on experience
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19. State of affairs?
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20. Consequences
• Unknown, unloved, undesired?
• How to make the Digital Humanities
known, loved and desired?
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21. Loved?
PhD student, History, 34
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22. Influence of usability
“I think it’s very
important to have a good
and workable interface
for these objects. That’s
why I used a paper
catalogue, because the
interface and the way to
search these objects is
not ideal”
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23. Consequences
• Unknown, unloved, undesired?
• How to make the Digital Humanities
known, loved and desired?
• What does this mean for Digital Humanities?
– Development should be user driven
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24. Known?
Professor, History, 56
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25. Google in the curriculum?
“Now I would say they need to learn
the logical structures, the basic
ideas about how search-
programmes are made, how the
data are kept at computers. How it’s
possible that something like Google
exists. You can think well, you’re
born with Google, so you don’t
know there was a world without
Google. And how it is possible that
there is a search machine that can
handle all those….”
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26. Consequences
• Unknown, unloved, undesired?
• How to make the Digital Humanities
known, loved and desired?
• What does this mean for Digital Humanities?
– Development should be user driven
– Digital Humanities should be part of education
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27. Thank you for you attention!
Max Kemman
Erasmus University Rotterdam
kemman@eshcc.eur.nl
@MaxJ_K
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