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

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become less “localized” with<strong>in</strong> the library and with<strong>in</strong> campus systems and expand <strong>in</strong>to the
general network environment. Library services <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>gly mean mach<strong>in</strong>e-mach<strong>in</strong>e
<strong>in</strong>teractions and will be embeddable <strong>in</strong> a variety of non-library environments (ARL 2009b).
The services provided by digital repositories with<strong>in</strong> research libraries will thus need to move beyond
the <strong>in</strong>dividual library to encompass services required <strong>in</strong> a larger network environment, and new content
of all k<strong>in</strong>ds will be required to support the research needs of users. This report made the important
po<strong>in</strong>t that many “services” that will be required will be to support mach<strong>in</strong>e-to-mach<strong>in</strong>e communication
through the use of standards and protocols.
In addition to services and content, digital tools, as outl<strong>in</strong>ed by Rockwell above, are a key component
of <strong>in</strong>frastructure. As explicated by Nguyen and Shilton (2008) <strong>in</strong> their survey of exist<strong>in</strong>g digital tools,
digital tools are typically dist<strong>in</strong>ct from the other services and resources created by digital humanities
centers. 678 They def<strong>in</strong>ed tools as “software developed for the creation, <strong>in</strong>terpretation, or shar<strong>in</strong>g and
communication of digital humanities resources and collections.” Nguyen and Shilton evaluated the
f<strong>in</strong>dability and usability of digital tools that were provided by digital humanities centers and created a
typology that further def<strong>in</strong>ed tools accord<strong>in</strong>g to their objectives (“access and exploration of resources,”
“<strong>in</strong>sight and <strong>in</strong>terpretation” or to f<strong>in</strong>d larger patterns and <strong>in</strong>terpret them, to support creation of new
digital resources, and “community and communication”), technological orig<strong>in</strong>s, and associated
resources. In this particular study they excluded tools developed outside the digital humanities
community or that had been developed to function with only a s<strong>in</strong>gle digital resource or collection. To
further manage the scope of their research they limited the concept of f<strong>in</strong>dability to the ability of a user
to f<strong>in</strong>d a tool on a digital humanities center website.
Nguyen and Shilton granted that a larger research study determ<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g how easy it is for users to f<strong>in</strong>d
digital tools us<strong>in</strong>g exist<strong>in</strong>g search eng<strong>in</strong>es and metadata structures would be very useful. In fact, the
difficulty scholars have <strong>in</strong> f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g relevant digital tools was recognized by the report of a 2009
workshop (Cohen et al. 2009) sponsored by the NSF, the NEH, and the Institute for Museum and
Library Services (IMLS) that <strong>in</strong>vestigated what would be required to create an <strong>in</strong>frastructure for digital
tools that could then support “data-driven scholarship.” 679 Nguyen and Shilton developed an
evaluation framework to assess the strength of each tool <strong>in</strong> terms of its easy identification, “feature,
display, and access,” the clarity of documentation or description, and ease of operation. The
effectiveness or technical performance of tools was not evaluated. Of the 39 tools evaluated, only
seven received high marks, and among the highest-scor<strong>in</strong>g tools were those such as Zotero 680 and
Omeka, 681 both created by the Center for History and New Media 682 at George Mason University, and
both of which have extensive documentation, technical support, and devoted user communities. One
feature of the highest-rated tools was their choice of words for “feature and display” that dist<strong>in</strong>guished
them as actual tools, and all tools fared better on variables that measured “ease of access” than on
those that measured “clarity of use.” Nguyen and Shilton offered seven useful recommendations <strong>in</strong>
terms of best practices for future digital tool designers: highlight tools more prom<strong>in</strong>ently on websites;
offer a specific description of the tool’s purpose and <strong>in</strong>tended audience; make previews available (e.g.,
screenshots, tutorials, demos); provide technical support (FAQs, e-mail address); clearly state the
678 The research conducted by Lilly Nguyen and Katie Shilton, “Tools for Humanists” was part of a larger research study of digital humanities centers by
Diane Zorich (2008).
679 An earlier workshop on the need to def<strong>in</strong>e the digital tools that humanists used and how to make them <strong>in</strong>teroperable was held at the University of
Virg<strong>in</strong>ia <strong>in</strong> 2005 (Frischer et al. 2005).
680 http://www.zotero.org/
681 http://omeka.org/
682 http://chnm.gmu.edu/