The Master Builders: LAIRAH Research on Good Practice in the Construction of Digital Humanities Projects

Warwick, C.; Terras, M.; Huntington, P.; Pappa, N.; Galina, I.

Abstract

This paper describes the results of research carried out during the LAIRAH (Log analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities) project () which is based at UCL’s School of Library Archive and Information Studies. It was a fifteen month study (reporting in October 2006) to discover what influences the long-term sustainability and use of digital resources in the humanities through the analysis and evaluation of real-time use. At Digital Humanities 2006 we reported on the early stages of the project, in which we carried out deep log analysis of the AHDS and Humbul portals to determine the level of use of digital resources. (Warwick et al. 2006) This proposal will discuss the results of the final phase of the research in which we examined digital resources from the point of view of those who designed and built them. We aimed to discover whether there were common characteristics and elements of good practice linking resources that are well- used. Numerous studies have been carried out into the information needs and information seeking practices of humanities scholars (Barrett, (2005) Talja and Maula (2003), Herman (2001) and British Academy, (2005)). However, our research is original because it surveys the practices of those who produce digital humanitiesresources. We also based the selection of our projects on deep log analysis: a quantitative technique which has not previously been applied to digital humanities resources to ascertain real usage levels of online digital resources.

Citation

Warwick, C., Terras, M., Huntington, P., Pappa, N., & Galina, I. (2007, June). The Master Builders: LAIRAH Research on Good Practice in the Construction of Digital Humanities Projects. Presented at Digital Humanites 2007: The 19th joint international conference of the Association for Computing in the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, June 4-8, 2007, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, US

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Digital Humanites 2007: The 19th joint international conference of the Association for Computing in the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, June 4-8, 2007
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Sep 5, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 23, 2015
• Pages: 242-244
• Edition: 2nd ed.
• Book Title: Digital humanities 2007. The 19th joint international conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign June 4 - June 8, 2007.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1696349
• Publisher URL: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dh2007/dh2007.abstracts.pdf
• Related Public URLs: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/4807/