User Engagement with Digital Archives: A Case Study of

Emblematica Online

Harriett Green, Timothy Cole, MJ Han, and Mara

WadeUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DLF Forum 2014

The Tool: Emblematica Online

What is an Emblem?

Motto

Pictura

Subscriptio

Peter Isselburg, Emblemata Politica, 1617http://libsysdigi.library.uiuc.edu/OCA/

Books2009-10/emblematapolitic00isel/

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Emblematica Online

• Currently funded by NEH Humanities Collections & Reference Resources grant

• Began with Illinois and HAB Wolfenbüttel digital collections expanded to Glasgow, Utrecht, Duke, and Getty Institute collections

http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Joseph Mayer, Vortrefflich-Hoch-Adeliches Controfeé, http://hdl.handle.net/10111/EmblemRegistry:E001002

Why User Assessment?

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

User Engagement Study

User Engagement Study

• Two phases: Interviews and usability testing with students and scholars

• Methodology: Semi-structured interviews with graduate students and scholars

• Disciplines: English literature, art history, medieval studies, musicology, book history

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Goals of Study

• Understand the research practices of humanities scholars who use emblem books in their research

• Understand behaviors of researchers working with Emblematica Online and similar digital archives

• Gather input on current and future functionalities and services in Emblematica

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

What did the users say?

Use

• To look up specific emblems and use as digital illustrations

• To search for emblems on certain topics and themes

• Challenge: Navigating the search interface and results

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Teaching

Teaching

Use in undergraduate and graduate courses for:• Analyze an emblem in conjunction with

Milton’s emblematic poetry• Emblems as an Illustrative tool for artistic

styles and cultural mores of historical periods

• A unit on emblems planned for an art history graduate seminar

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Research

Research

• Access to archival materials from around the world

• Helps to cultivate language skills• Interdisciplinary material for art,

literary studies, history, cultural studies, etc.

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Functionalities

Suggested Functionalities

• Indicate editions of the volumes• Enable annotations• More intuitive search interface• Improve IconClass metadata

navigation• Add historical essays for context

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

Impact on Field

Possible Impact of Emblematica?

• Expand the use of emblems in research across multiple disciplines

• Increase the impact and citations of emblem studies scholarship

• Evolution in humanities research with digital vs. print content

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

To Come

Coming Up Next….

Open Emblem Portal• Improved search

interface• Search filter by

institution• Emblem-level

metadata• Annotation Tool• Collection Building

tool

User Study • Winter 2014: Usability

testing of the Open Emblem portal

• March 2015: Paper presentation at ACRL 2015 on full user study

@greenharrgreen19@illinois.edu

http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu

Photo Credits• "Does he measure up? by Stevie Spiers Photography

http://www.steviespiersphotography.com/, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevies_snaps/15252939767

• “Measuring Time,” by aussiegall, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/286709039

• "Magnifying Glass,” by Auntie P, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/17135231

• "Untitled” by rachel a. k., on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kimonomania/474758933

• "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

• "Crane Gears” by Kevin Utting, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tallkev/256810217

• "Meteor Crater, Arizona” by ph-stop, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ph-stop/2387502810

• "Paris: telescope on Eiffel Tower // Teleskop auf dem Eiffelturm” by brongaeh, on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/brongaeh/9933790456

Thank you!

Harriett GreenEnglish and Digital Humanities

LibrarianUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign

green19@illinois.eduTwitter: @greenharr