Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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factors <strong>in</strong>hibited their use (Warwick et al. 2008a). For their analysis they used logs from the AHDS
servers, the Humbul Humanities Hub (now Intute), and Artifact. Unfortunately, they were not able to
use “<strong>in</strong>dividual logs from the servers of digital humanities projects” because of time constra<strong>in</strong>ts. In
addition to us<strong>in</strong>g log data they mounted a questionnaire and held a workshop with users regard<strong>in</strong>g
neglected resources to see whether they could determ<strong>in</strong>e why resources were not be<strong>in</strong>g used. One
significant difficulty that they encountered was attempt<strong>in</strong>g to extract log data, even when us<strong>in</strong>g the
logs of large, government-funded repositories. Nonetheless, the log data from the AHDS central site
did show those l<strong>in</strong>ks that were followed on the site and it was thus possible to generate a list of pages
that visitors actually used. Resources about warfare were quite popular, as were census data and family
history. One <strong>in</strong>sight they offered was that resources that were not particularly well named were often
seldom used, and they advised digital project creators to utilize simple titles and good descriptions that
made it clear what a resource was about.
S<strong>in</strong>ce Warwick et al. (2008a) wanted to get a broad range of answers <strong>in</strong> terms of digital resources, they
did not offer a def<strong>in</strong>ition of resources <strong>in</strong> their questionnaire and <strong>in</strong>stead asked participants to list their
three favorite resources. They learned that most of the users they surveyed considered digital resources
“not to be specialist research resources for humanities scholarship, but generic <strong>in</strong>formation resources.”
The most popular resource listed was the university library website; this was followed by Google.
Many resources were simply classified as “other,” and most were “<strong>in</strong>formation resources or gateways,
archives and subject portals” as well as subject-based digital libraries. This f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g sharply contradicts
the belief of many digital project creators that the specialist research tools they create for faculty will
be heavily used, as Warwick et al. expla<strong>in</strong>:
It therefore appears that most of our users regard digital resources primarily as a way to access
<strong>in</strong>formation, which <strong>in</strong> the analogue world might be compared to the library or archive, rather
than specialist research resources which we might compare to a monograph or a literary text for
primary study. It is significant that most resources fall <strong>in</strong>to the ‘other’ category, which suggests
that there is a very wide range of resources be<strong>in</strong>g used, and very little agreement as to which
are most useful (Warwick et al. 2008a)
Similar results were observed by Dalbello et al. (2006) <strong>in</strong> that classicists who cited electronic resources
never utilized them as research or primary resources, or at least did not admit to do<strong>in</strong>g so.
The last component of the user research conducted by Warwick et al. (2008a) was a workshop about
neglected digital resources. They found it was very difficult to recruit participants, and the f<strong>in</strong>al group
was largely composed of historians, archaeologists, graduate students, and <strong>in</strong>dividuals who worked <strong>in</strong>
humanities comput<strong>in</strong>g. They found that many of their participants, particularly if they came from a
more traditional humanities background, were generally unwill<strong>in</strong>g to “commit themselves” <strong>in</strong> terms of
the quality and usefulness of resources, especially if these resources were outside of their discipl<strong>in</strong>e.
Warwick et al. reasoned that this reluctance was perhaps due to the fact that most “specialist digital
humanities research resources” were very unfamiliar to most humanities academics. In general,
participants were fairly critical of the resources they were asked to evaluate, and there was no
“universal enthusiasm” regard<strong>in</strong>g “content, <strong>in</strong>terface and ease of use.”
Warwick et al. (2008a) offered a number of general recommendations as a result of this research and
strongly argued that publicly funded digital research projects should have to ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong> log data and
make it available for at least three years. They reiterated that clear and understandable nam<strong>in</strong>g and
describ<strong>in</strong>g of projects was very important for ensur<strong>in</strong>g maximum impact. Additionally, s<strong>in</strong>ce general