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User Engagement with Digital
Archives: A Case Study of
Emblematica Online
Harriett Green
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ACRL 2015 Conference
March 27, 2015
Today’s talk
• Digital collections and User Engagement
• Overview of Emblematica Online
• Results of usability study of Emblematica
• What are the future implications for
humanities scholarship with digital
collections?
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Why user studies of digital
archives?
• Build digital collections strategically and
sustainably for increased use among
library patrons
• Correlate content and functionalities to
researchers’ needs
• Ensure Return On Investment
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
User Assessment is Necessary
“While a greater reliance and dependency on digital
resources is inevitable, the quality of the data and their
organization and accessibility in service to teaching and
scholarship are major concerns.
“Without the guiding voice of scholars, the tremendous
effort now being devoted to digitizing our cultural heritage
could in fact impede, not facilitate, future research.”
—Charles Henry, The Idea of Order: Transforming
Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Digital Collections and Humanities
Scholars
• Brockman Palmer, et al., Scholarly Work in the Humanities and the Evolving Information Environment (CLIR Pub 104)
• Our Cultural Commonwealth: The Report of the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities Project (LAIRAH)
• Ithaka S+R, Supporting the Changing Research Practices of… - Art Historians, Historians@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Emblematica Online
• Provides single point of access to
digitized emblem books from libraries
in U.S., Germany, Netherlands, UK
• Funded by a NEH/DFG Bilateral
Digital Humanities grant (2008) and
NEH Humanities Collections and
Reference Resources grant (2013)
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
What is an Emblem?
Motto
Pictura
Subscriptio
Peter Isselburg, Emblemata Politica, 1617http://libsysdigi.library.uiuc.edu/OCA/B
ooks2009-10/emblematapolitic00isel/
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
What’s in Emblematica?
• Nearly 1400 emblem books
• 23,420 individual emblems
• Books digitized from the collections of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
HAB Wolfenbüttel, University of Utrecht,
University of Glasgow, Duke University
and the Getty Institute
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Goals of Study
• Gain further insights into research
practices of humanities scholars
• Learn about behaviors of researchers
working with Emblematica Online and
similar specialized digital archives
• Gather input to assess the new
functionalities added to Emblematica
Online, and determine future
functionalities@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
User Assessment Study
Interviews
• 10 semi-structured
interviews
• Subjects: graduate
students and scholars at
University of Illinois, HAB
Wolfenbüttel, and Society
for Emblem Studies
• English, art history,
medieval studies,
musicology, linguistics
Usability Testing
• 5 usability testing
sessions: Protocol
developed from
interviews
• Subjects: Graduate
students and faculty
members from the
University of Illinois
• Primarily from
departments of English
and Theatre@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Teaching
• Emblems as an Illustrative tool for artistic
styles and cultural mores
• A unit on emblems for a graduate seminar
on history of the animal and early modern
culture“Spenser has an emblematic style in his
poetry…. I think if students could be directed
from those kind of moments in the poetry to
emblem culture, other emblems of charity,
other emblems of holiness, I think that could be
a great tool.” —Faculty@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Discovery of Content
• To look up specific emblems
• To search for emblems on themes
• Expand interdisciplinary research via new
sources of content such as emblems
“[Emblematica Online] could help students
and researchers get across multi-lingual
barriers because it is a multi-lingual tradition
and visual tradition. It can also help pioneer
searches that begin as visual and verbal
searches.” —Faculty @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Research
• Digitized emblem books enable access to
archives normally requiring expensive
travel around the world
• Enhance skills in early modern languages,
incorporate visual culture and theory
“I look at archival sources, account books,
buildings, architectural treatises, musical
treatises, but this is another sphere, another
realm so to speak that could be used to gather
more information.” —Faculty@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Scholarly Communications and
Impact
• Expand the use of emblems in research
across multiple disciplines
• Increase the impact and prominence of
scholarship in emblem studies
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
“I would return to the point of [Emblematica Online] not
being bound by a single national tradition or a single
library collection. I think that, in and of itself, may allow
people to draw on a broader range of sources than they
otherwise would. That can show itself in the scholarship
that gets produced on the topic.”—Faculty
Usability Testing Issues
GOOD
• Quality of scanned
images
• Breadth of digitized
content
• Easy access to the
digital collection
TO IMPROVE
• Search
Functionality
• Explanation of
terms and
Iconclass
• More Interactivity
with digitized
content@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Functionalities to Add
• Bibliographic information on editions and
multiple volumes
• Annotation tool
• Improve search interface with more search
filter and faceting
• Include background information that
provides more of a historical context for
the works
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
Future Impact of Digital Collections
on Humanities Scholarship?
• Potential to advance Interdisciplinarity in
humanities scholarship
• Need for user engagement
• How does the digital and print complement
each other?
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
“When we zoomed in, that was just beautiful, and that you
can see hand markings and other pencil markings that
would be on there…. For me as a researcher, that matters
and I loved the quality of that.”
—Graduate Student
Photo Credits
• “Tun und Lassen, ist groß der Massen,” from Vortrefflich-Hoch-Adeliches Controfeé, http://hdl.handle.net/10111/EmblemRegistry:E001002
• “Measuring Time,” by aussiegall, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/286709039
• brick detail by Grant MacDonald, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/grantmac/2578109298
• "classroom” by Lauren Manning, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmanning/2318943806
• "More Bildsten notebooks” by Jonas Lowgren, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonas_lowgren/7406596056
• "Verstandt Jovi verwandt," from Vortrefflich-hoch-adeliches Controfeâe, das ist, Vollkommene...http://hdl.handle.net/10111/EmblemRegistry:E000996
• "Paris: telescope on Eiffel Tower // Teleskop auf dem Eiffelturm” by brongaeh, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/brongaeh/9933790456
• "Tunnel of black” by Shemsu.Hor, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/shemsu_hor/14814306629
• "Dam Gears” by Eduardo Tavares, on Flickr,
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