PurposeTo date, few studies have been undertaken to make explicit how microblogging technologies are used by and can benefit scholars. This paper investigates the use of Twitter by an academic community, and poses the following questions: does the use of a Twitter enabled backchannel enhance the conference experience, collaboration and the co-construction of knowledge? How is microblogging used within an academic conference setting, and can we articulate the benefits it may bring to a discipline? Prominent Tweeters were identified and a small qualitative survey was undertaken to ascertain individuals' attitudes towards a Twitter enabled backchannel. Findings Draft for comment2 Conference hashtagged Twitter activity does not constitute a single distributed conversation but, rather multiple monologues with a few intermittent, discontinuous, loosely joined dialogues between users. The digital backchannel constitutes a multidirectional complex space in which the users make notes, share resources, hold discussions and ask questions as well as establishing a clear individual online presence. The use of Twitter as a platform for conference backchannels enables the community to expand communication and participation of events amongst its members. The analysis revealed the close knit nature of the DH researcher community, which may be somewhat intimidating for those new to the field or conference. Practical implicationsThis study has indicated that, given Twitter is becoming increasingly important for academic communities, new, dedicated methodologies for the analysis and understanding of Tweet based corpora are necessary. Routinely used textual analysis tools cannot be applied to corpora of tweets in a straightforward manner, due to the creative and fragmentary nature of language used within microblogging. In this paper, a method has been suggesting to categorize tweets using open coded analysis to facilitate understanding of tweet based corpora, which could be adopted by other studies. Originality/valueThis paper is the first exhaustive study that we are aware of concentrating on how microblogging technologies such as twitter are used by and can benefit scholars. This data set provides both a valuable insight into the prevalence of a variety of Twitter practices within the constraints of a conference setting, and highlights the need for methodologies to be developed to analyse social media streams such as twitter feeds. It also provides a comprehensive bibliography of other research into microblogging.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. What people study when they study Twitter Classifying Twitter related academic papers Structured Abstract PurposeSince its introduction in 2006, messages posted to the microblogging system Twitter have provided a rich dataset for researchers, leading to the publication of over a thousand academic papers. This paper aims to identify this published work and to classify it in order to understand Twitter based research. Design/methodology/approachFirstly the papers on Twitter were identified. Secondly, following a review of the literature, a classification of the dimensions of microblogging research was established. Thirdly, papers were qualitatively classified using open coded content analysis, based on the paper's title and abstract, in order to analyze method, subject, and approach. FindingsThe majority of published work relating to Twitter concentrates on aspects of the messages sent and details of the users. A variety of methodological approaches are used across a range of identified domains. Research LimitationsThis work reviewed the abstracts of all papers available via database search on the term "Twitter" and this has two major implications: 1) the full papers are not considered and so works may be misclassified if their abstract is not clear, 2) publications not indexed by the databases, such as book chapters, are not included. The study is focussed on microblogging, the applicability of the approach to other media is not considered. Originality/valueTo date there has not been an overarching study to look at the methods and purpose of those using Twitter as a research subject. Our major contribution is to scope out papers published on Twitter until the close of 2011. The classification derived here will provide a framework within which researchers studying Twitter related topics will be able to position and ground their work.

Researchers in the humanities adopt a wide variety of approaches to their research. Their work tends to focus on texts and images, but they use and also create a wide range of information resources, in print, manuscript and digital forms. Like other researchers, they face multiple demands on their time, and so they find the ease and speed of access to digital resources very attractive: some of them note that they are reluctant on occasion to consult Communication uses (e-mail lists & noti cations) Electronic journals Journals Grid and cloud resources Text mining Web 2.0 tools Virtual Research Environment (VRE) Image and data processing Arti cial Intelligence Case Studies

There are now many online, digital resources in the humanities, and their creation is funded by various governmental, academic, and philanthropic sources. What happens to these resources after completion is very poorly understood. No systematic survey of digital resource usage in the humanities has ever been undertaken -and the factors for use and non-use of digital resources are unknown. The LAIRAH (Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities) 1 Project is a 15 month long study into the factors which determine long term use and neglect of digital resources in the arts and humanities. Using quantitative Deep Log Analysis techniques to understand real time user behaviour, and qualitative user workshops to gain an understanding of user approaches to digital resources in the arts and humanities, the study identifies factors which may predispose a digital resource to become used or neglected in the long term.This paper provides an overview of the techniques used in the LAIRAH project, and presents some preliminary results which may be of use to both the creators of digital resources in the humanities, and the funders of these projects, to ensure that significant intellectual effort and time, and financial resources, are not wasted in the creation of projects which are then neglected by the user community.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. (Projects) in UCL's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. With a background in classical art history, English literature and computer science, her doctorate in engineering (University of Oxford) examined how to use advanced information engineering technologies to interpret and read Roman texts. Publications include Image to Interpretation: Intelligent Systems to Aid Historians in the Reading of the Vindolanda Texts (OUP, 2006) and Digital Images for the Information Professional (Ashgate, 2008), and she has co-edited various volumes such as Digital Humanities in Practice (Facet, 2012) and Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader (Ashgate, 2013). She currently serves on the Board of Curators of the University of Oxford Libraries and the Board of the National Library of Scotland, and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Her research focuses on the use of computational techniques to enable research in the arts and humanities that would otherwise be impossible. Professor Terras is on Twitter @melissaterras, and she may also be contacted at m.terras@ucl.ac.uk. Abstract Purpose -This paper situates the activity of digitisation to increase access to cultural and heritage content alongside the objectives of the Open Access movement. It demonstrates that increasingly open licensing of digital cultural heritage content is creating opportunities for researchers in the arts and humanities for both access to and analysis of cultural heritage Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF EXETER At 08:03 06 August 2015 (PT) materials. Design/methodology/approach -The paper is primarily a literature and scoping review of the current digitisation licensing climate, using and embedding examples from ongoing research projects and recent writings on OA and digitisation to highlight both opportunities and barriers to the creation and use of digital heritage content from galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM). Findings -The digital information environment in which digitised content is created and delivered has changed phenomenally, allowing the sharing and reuse of digital data and encouraging new advances in research across the sector, although issues of licensing persist. There ...

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As Web 2.0 technologies changed the World Wide Web from a read-only to a cocreative digital experience, a range of commercial and non-commercial platforms emerged to allow online users to contribute to discussions and use their knowledge, experience, and time to build online content. Alongside the widespread success of collaboratively produced resources such as Wikipedia came a movement in the cultural and heritage sectors to trial crowdsourcing-the harnessing of online activities and behaviour to aid in large-scale ventures such as tagging, commenting, rating, reviewing, text correcting, and the creation and uploading of content in a methodical, task-based fashion (Holley 2010)-to improve the quality of, and widen access to, online collections. Building on this, within Digital Humanities there have been attempts to crowdsource more complex tasks traditionally assumed to be carried out by academic scholars: such as the accurate transcription of manuscript material. This chapter aims to survey the growth and uptake of crowdsourcing for culture and heritage, and more specifically, within Digital Humanities. It raises issues of public engagement and asks how the use of technology to involve and engage a wider audience with tasks that have been the traditional purview of academics can broaden the scope and appreciation of humanistic enquiry. Finally, it asks what this increasingly common public-facing activity means for Digital Humanities itself, as the success of these projects demonstrates the effectiveness of building projects for, and involving, a wide online audience.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) make it technically possible for digital assets to be owned and traded, introducing the concept of scarcity in the digital realm for the first time. Resulting from this technical development, this paper asks the question, do they provide an opportunity for fundraising for galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), by selling ownership of digital copies of their collections? Although NFTs in their current format were first invented in 2017 as a means for game players to trade virtual goods, they reached the mainstream in 2021, when the auction house Christie’s held their first-ever sale exclusively for an NFT of a digital image, that was eventually sold for a record 69 million USD. The potential of NFTs to generate significant revenue for artists and museums by selling effectively a cryptographically signed copy of a digital image (similar to real-world limited editions, which are signed and numbered copies of a given artwork), has sparked the interest of the financially deprived museum and heritage sector with world-renowned institutions such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Hermitage Museum, having already employed NFTs in order to raise funds. Concerns surrounding the environmental impact of blockchain technology and the rise of malicious projects, exploiting previously digitised heritage content made available through OpenGLAM licensing, have attracted criticism over the speculative use of the technology. In this paper, we present the current state of affairs in relation to NFTs and the cultural heritage sector, identifying challenges, whilst highlighting opportunities that they create for revenue generation, in order to help address the ever-increasing financial challenges of galleries and museums.