The document discusses serendipity in digital humanities research tools. It presents findings from interviews with historians and digital humanists about experiencing serendipity through physical and online research methods. Models of serendipity in information encountering are reviewed. The document also examines several digital tools designed to facilitate serendipity, analyzing their abilities to support noticing, stopping, examining, capturing, and returning to found information. Key findings indicate that environments which are trigger-rich and enable connections can lead to unexpected discoveries important for serendipity.

1. Designing the next big thing:
Randomness vs. Serendipity
in
DH tools
Kim Martin and Anabel Quan-Haase
University of Western Ontario

2. On the need to slow down
Historicization
Contextualization
Computer Forensics
Media Archaeology

3. Research Questions
• What do digital humanists require from an online
information tool?
• How do these scholars conceive of serendipity in the
online environment?
• Do the current DH tools for searching and browsing
material meet the criteria required by these scholars?

4. Historians
Serendipity in the Research Process

5. “I used to use the library a lot more, I think just
when I was, you know you just find a shelf in the
library and look around it and see what else is
there. I’ll still do that if I’m looking for something in
particular”
- P20

6. Historian’s own words
“the pro of the
physical
searching is the
serendipity
aspect of it..
where you go to
the bookshelf
and use the other
books that you
might not have
thought of as
being useful”
“I don’t know how
to describe this,
but it… removed
the serendipity
factor.You can
browse online, but
that’s always much
more targeted,
sometimes, most of
us are very happy
to have that, sort
of, inadvertent
discovery”
“I still tell my
students that,
with all the
online searches,
there’s still no
substitute for
going to the
stacks and
looking through
and seeing
what’s there”

7. Digital Humanists
Serendipity via Social Media

8. “Sometimes new ideas will just find me. Sometimes its networking”
“And the most interesting stuff I’ve picked up in the
past couple of years, are new things that I didn’t already
know about that have come through Twitter.”
“You see the Tweet, you click the link,
it opens in the browser. You have to…
again it’s the push vs pull thing. You
haven’t got to go and seek it out, it just
comes your way.”
“But, yeah, I mean, I think you find
information earlier than other people
through Twitter.”
“one of my research projects started after a Twitter
conversation.”
“because I’ve got a large network of followers um some of it,
its, its quite serendipitous in that respect. Stuff that comes up
is things that I would never normally come across or wanted
to come across in my own research and searching. And it
actually turns out to be incredibly useful.”

9. Modeling Serendipity
• Facets of serendipity in everyday chance
encounters
(Rubin, Burkell, & Quan-Haase, 2011)
• Serendipitous information encountering
(Makri & Blandford, 2012)
• Information encountering
(Erdelez, 2004)

10. Facets of Serendipity in Everyday Chance
Encounters
Rubin, V. L., Burkell, J., & Quan-Haase, A. (2011). Facets of serendipity in everyday
chance encounters: A grounded theory approach to blog analysis. Information Research.
URL: http://informationr.net/ir/16-3/paper488.html

12. Makri, S., & Blandford, A. (2012). Coming across information serendipitously : Part 1 – A process model.
To appear in Journal of Documentation, 1-18.
Serendipitous Information Encountering

13. Erdelez, S. (2004). Investigation of information encountering in the controlled research
environment. Information Processing & Management, 40(6), 1013-1025. doi:10.1016/j.ipm.
2004.02.002
Information Encountering

14. Model Comparison across
Features

15. Findings:
à Serendipitous environments are those that are: trigger-rich, enable connections,
and lead to the unexpected.
à the type of digital environment (e.g., database, social media site) may influence
how frequently users perceive they experience serendipity in that environment.
McCay-Peet, L. (2013). Investigating work-related serendipity, what influences it, and how it may be facilitated in digital
environments. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Retrieved from http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/42727
For serendipity to occur: Environment matters

16. Experiencing Serendipity
Number of Participants

17. Serendipity Tools
Access Points and Programming for Chance

18. Noticing
Stopping
✔
Examining
✔
Capturing
✔
Returning

19. “Because Serendip-o-
matic asks sources to
speak for themselves,
users can step back and
discover connections
they never knew existed.
The team worked to re-
create that moment
when a friend
recommends an
amazing book, or a
librarian suggests a new
source. It’s not search,
it’s serendipity.”
- Serendip-o-matic
design team

20. Noticing
✔
Stopping
✔
Examining
✔
Capturing
✔
Returning

22. Noticing
✔
Stopping
✔
Examining
✔
Capturing
Returning

24. Noticing
✔
Stopping
✔
Examining
✔
Capturing
Returning

26. Findings
Knowing Where You’ve Been

27. Findings
Noticing Stopping Examining Capturing Returning
Serendip-o-
matic
✓ ✓ ✓
Trove News
Bot
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Mechanical
Curator
✓ ✓ ✓
DP.LA Bot ✓ ✓ ✓

28. Twitter
Evernote
Zotero GitHub
Voyant
Jstor
Digital
Library Neatline
Omeka
Wordpress
Google

29. References
CHMN. (2013). Serendip-o-matic: Let your sources surprise you. One Week | One Tool. Retrieved October 31,
2013, from serendip-o-matic.com/about
Erdelez, Sanda. 2004. “Investigation of Information Encountering in the Controlled Research Environment.”
Information Processing & Management 40 (6) (November): 1013–1025. doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2004.02.002.
Makri, Stephann, and Ann Blandford. 2012. “Coming across Information Serendipitously – Part 1: A Process
Model.” Journal of Documentation 68 (5): 684–705.
McCay-Peet, L. (2013). Investigating work-related serendipity, what influences it, and how it may be facilitated
in digital environments. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada. Retrieved from http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/42727
O’Steen, Ben (2013). Mechanical Curator. British Library Labs. http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/
Rubin, V.L., J. Burkell, and Anabel Quan-Haase. 2011. “"Facets of Serendipity in Everyday Chance
Encounters: A Grounded Theory Approach to Blog Analysis.” Information Research 16 (3).
Samplereality. (2013). DPLABot. https://github.com/samplereality/DPLAbot July 11, 2013.
Sherratt, T (2013) Trove News Bot. https://github.com/wragge/trovenewsbot Nov 3, 2013.