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materials could be found, a recent comprehensive study that <strong>in</strong>vestigated <strong>in</strong> detail the research habits of
digital humanists with e-texts was used to ga<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>sight <strong>in</strong>to larger research and use patterns of digital
humanities scholars and how these might reflect the behaviors and needs of those scholars who use
digital classics resources.
A study by Toms and O’Brien (2008) focused on self-identified e-humanists and how they utilized
<strong>in</strong>formation and communication technology (ICT) to <strong>in</strong>form the design of an “e-humanist’s
workbench.” Their research results were based on small sample of digital humanists who responded to
a web-based survey, and Toms and O’Brien noted that they planned to expand their research with
<strong>in</strong>terviews and observations of scholars at work. As part of their research they exam<strong>in</strong>ed dozens of
articles and over 40 years of studies on scholarly <strong>in</strong>formation behavior and the “traditional” research
habits of humanists (e.g., with pr<strong>in</strong>ted library materials or databases). One fundamental conclusion
they reached was that “the accumulated research depicts the humanist as a solitary scholar who values
primary materials and secondary materials—namely books—and engages <strong>in</strong> brows<strong>in</strong>g behaviour more
than search<strong>in</strong>g” (Toms and O’Brien 2008). They also observed that the “<strong>in</strong>formation seek<strong>in</strong>g strategy
of choice” was l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g rather than search<strong>in</strong>g or a comb<strong>in</strong>ation of brows<strong>in</strong>g different materials and
cha<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g, or us<strong>in</strong>g one relevant article to f<strong>in</strong>d other articles (e.g., through the footnotes or by who has
cited the article <strong>in</strong> hand). Their overview of the literature also illustrated that when humanists began
research they cared more about depth than relevance and that this facilitated the development of ideas,
the ability to make connections, and the creation of an <strong>in</strong>itial knowledge base to which later knowledge
could be related.
One problem that Toms and O’Brien found with the theoretical studies of <strong>in</strong>formation behavior 572 that
they considered was that the studies typically excluded how <strong>in</strong>formation is actually used by humanists
after it is found and thus are of limited use <strong>in</strong> the development of actual systems. “Despite the
profound impact of technology on this scholarly community,” Toms and O’Brien remarked, “little is
known about how computers have affected humanists’ work flow, unless it is to say that scholars adopt
technologies when they augment established research practices”(Toms and O’Brien 2008).
Nonetheless, earlier work conducted by one of the authors of this paper (Toms and Flora 2005) had
identified a concrete set of needs for e-humanists that <strong>in</strong>cluded five key components: (1) access to
primary sources; (2) presentation of text; (3) text analysis and relevant tools; (4) access to secondary
sources; and (5) tools for communication and collaboration. In addition, Toms and O’Brien noted that
there is little jo<strong>in</strong>t publication <strong>in</strong> the humanities. Hav<strong>in</strong>g thus reviewed both the work of <strong>in</strong>formation
scientists and humanists, they elaborated on three common themes: (1) humanities scholarship utilizes
a diverse set of primary and secondary sources and while text is the primary resource, a variety of
digital media are also used; (2) digital humanists use a variety of tools and techniques when work<strong>in</strong>g
with encoded texts; and (3) humanists were typically solitary researchers (e.g., they saw little evidence
of jo<strong>in</strong>t publication) but did communicate with other scholars.
Seek<strong>in</strong>g to confirm or expand these f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs, Toms and O’Brien conducted a survey of self-identified
e-humanists to expand their knowledge regard<strong>in</strong>g the current use of electronic texts by e-humanists,
the research environment of e-humanists, and the types of research performed by all humanists. Survey
participants were recruited through listservs such as HUMANIST, 573 and all results were obta<strong>in</strong>ed
from a questionnaire that asked about general <strong>in</strong>formation, teach<strong>in</strong>g and research <strong>in</strong>terests, and the use
of ICT. Responses of the 169 survey participants were analyzed us<strong>in</strong>g several different software tools.
572 As an overview of all of these studies, Toms and O’Brien provided a table that summarized that various stages of the <strong>in</strong>formation-seek<strong>in</strong>g process
identified by different researchers.
573 http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/