“A greatly unexplored area”: Digital curation and innovation in digital humanities

Abstract

New types of digital data, tools, and methods, for instance those that cross academic disciplines and domains, those that feature teams instead of single scholars, and those that involve individuals from outside the academy, enables new forms of scholarship and teaching in digital humanities. Such scholarship promotes reuse of digital data, provokes new research questions, and cultivates new audiences. Digital curation, the process of managing a trusted body of information for current and future use, helps maximize the value of research in digital humanities. Predicated on semistructured interviews, this naturalistic case study explores the creation, use, storage, and planned reuse of data by 45 interviewees involved with 19 Office of Digital Humanities Start‐Up Grant (SUG) projects. Interviewees grappled with challenges surrounding data, collaboration and communication, planning and project management, awareness and outreach, resources, and technology. Overall this study explores the existing digital curation practices and needs of scholars engaged in innovative digital humanities work and to discern how closely these practices and needs align with the digital curation literature.

Digging into data management in public‐funded, international research in digital humanities

“…Discretionary outcomes are eclectic (29 types) (Table ). Nine of 11 projects (81.81%) produce traditional scholarly publications (6 of 11, or 54.54%, also produced another traditional scholarly output, conference papers); this finding aligns with previous research (Bishoff & Johnston, ; Mischo et al, ; Poole, ). Software or tools comprise the second largest group (7 of 11 projects or 63.63%).…”

“…As in Poole (), opinions vary, but more than two‐thirds of respondents praise the DMP requirement (Table ). The DMP encourages personnel to assume a data lifecycle approach, functions as a risk management tool, promotes reuse, helps acculturate new project personnel, given staff turnover, and provides for accountability to public investment.…”

“…Also striking, but understandable, given the data management challenges they already face, participants discuss making their data publicly available, not necessarily findable, accessible, or usable. They say little about who outside of their project team might reuse their data, when, how, and for what purposes, a finding that aligns with Poole () and points to a fundamental and familiar challenge, viz., the lack of a proven value proposition for sharing.…”

“…Data management is as pressing an issue in the humanities as in the sciences (Flanders & Munoz, n.d.; American Council of Learned Societies, ; Benardou, Constantopoulos, & Dallas, ; Benardou, Constantopoulos, Dallas, & Gavrilis, ; Henry, ; Poole, , , ; Renear et al, ) . It helps establish authority, prevents or mitigates corruption, deterioration, and loss, and facilitates sharing and reuse (Renear et al, ).…”

“…The field remains capacious, embracing information practices such as archiving, quantitative analysis, tool‐building, visualization, 3D modeling, sonification, curation, manipulation, interpretation, editing, modeling, mapping, reading, mining, gaming, remixing, publishing, critiquing, collaborating, code studies, and databases—often at unprecedented scale and scope (Burdick, ; Davidson, ; Hayles, ; Klein & Gold, ; Poole, , ; Trace & Karadkar, ). Often trained in traditional disciplines, DH scholars may occupy traditional faculty positions, but in addition to or instead of these positions, many undertake hybrid information work involving a wide range of digital data, resources, methods, activities, and tools (Clement & Carter, ; Given & Willson, ).…”