User Engagement with Digital Archives: A Case Study of Emblematica Online

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 [email protected]

User Assessment

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

Emblematica Online

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 [email protected]

What is an Emblem?

Motto

Pictura

Subscriptio

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

ooks2009-10/emblematapolitic00isel/

@greenharr [email protected]

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 [email protected]

Usability Study

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

“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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

“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,

Thank you!

Harriett Green

English and Digital Humanities Librarian

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

[email protected]

Twitter: @greenharr