This document summarizes a study of incentives for participants in digital history projects. It finds that while the official incentive is to build new tools for historical research, the realities are different for each community of practice (CoP). The research CoP prioritizes their own thesis work over the tool. The technology CoP focuses on building interfaces rather than ensuring the tool is stable for research. And the tool CoP sees the project as a way to prove concepts and gain continued funding. As a result, the project functions more as a boundary object that coordinates these different incentives rather than achieving the goal of a finished tool for historians to use. There are open questions around whether historians can do big data analysis before tools are ready, and how

1. Digital History Projects
as Boundary Objects
@MaxKemman
University of Luxembourg
Reflections on reading history from a distance
AIUCD 2017, 26-28 January 2017, Rome, Italy

2. Incentives for digital history projects
Official incentive: to build a new tool using new
technologies to be used for historical research
(in a new way)
Interviewing participants for individual incentives
(Weedman 1998):
• Reasons for joining the project
• Goals
• Expected effects of participation
Two case studies (10 participants)

3. The structure of a project
Methodological interdisciplinarity: Incorporating
methods, concepts, tools from other disciplines
to improve historical research (Klein 2014)
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator
Project team
Historians Computer experts
EngineersPhDs

4. Reasons for joining
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator
Historians
EngineersPhDs

5. Goals
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator EngineersPhDs

6. Expected effects of participation
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator
Historians?
EngineersPhDs

7. The structure of a project
Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998) beyond
disciplines
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator
Project team
Historians Computer experts
EngineersPhDs

8. Incentives per CoP
Research CoP
“if [the project] fails, it cannot be the case that my thesis
also fails. You can to some extent see it independent of
one another, as I do, so there is a secret clause, if [the
project] fails I just graduate with a historical thesis”
“what he must do is to write a thesis of 5 chapters that
are of [theoretical] value… And there he must just write
conventional stories, narratives. And at the same time he
uses digital means in his research”
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator EngineersPhDs

9. Incentives per CoP
Technology CoP
“the project is basically building an interface
where all this information is presented in a …
user-friendly way, in a good way. That would be
the success of the project. What I'm doing might
provide additional information to this interface
from the original text sources that are not yet
structured, that would be good, but it's not …
paramount for the success of the project”
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator EngineersPhDs

10. Incentives per CoP
Tool CoP
“the investment, the knowledge-building, the
technological know-how, that we’ve developed”
“the idea of the project has always been a proof-
of-concept … and … bring attention to our
system that we can try with them to get
continued funding”
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator EngineersPhDs

11. Incentives for digital history projects
Official incentive: to build a new tool using new
technologies to be used for historical research
(in a new way)
• Tool CoP: tool probably not finished and stable
in time for historical research
• Technology CoP: technology probably not
stable in time for tool
• Research CoP: research does not require the
tool

12. Digital history project as boundary object
“you have a research idea, and you fit that to the call
you’re applying to, and then you get funding … And
if you then hire researchers, yes they too have their
own idea of course, and their own line of research
they’re working on, and they try to fit that in the
research project”
Boundary objects: an object that maintains a
common identity among the different participants,
yet is shaped individually according to disciplinary
needs (Star and Griesemer 1989, Star 2010)

13. Why boundary objects?
Coordination of incentives
“we're supposed to be advising the team developing
the tool. And trying to then carry out research on a
specific case study. And so originally it was like wow
we're going to be able to use the tool, but very
quickly it became clear ok actually probably we're
not going to be able to use the tool”
Beyond disciplines

14. Questions for digital history projects
• Can historians already do big data analysis if all of
the methods are still under development?
• Timing of funding: should PhDs start together with
tool development?
• Technology management: can digital history tool
development be reduced to smaller steps?
• Technology management: clear communication of
incentives between CoPs
• Risk management: how much risk do we want to
take in digital history projects? Can a project fail?

15. Future research
• Revisiting case studies
• Looking at more digital history projects
• Analysing output of historians in such projects

16. Grazie
Thank you for listening
www.maxkemman.nl
@MaxKemman
max.kemman@uni.lu