In Between Research Cultures – The State of Digital Humanities in Finland

Abstract

Digital humanities (DH) as a research field has been developing rapidly in Finland during the past few years, mainly due to increased funding and profiling activities. Although these infrastructural developments have created (smaller and larger) centres, hubs and clusters related directly or indirectly to digital humanities, the future of Finnish research in this area depends on how the various scholarly and memory organisations, as well as individual scholars, succeed in joining forces. The overall argument in this paper is that digital humanities needs to establish its identity and to create a new space among research cultures with varying characteristics tackling a multitude of problems, and that this can only be achieved through national collaboration and the joint exploitation of the strengths of existing DH hubs. The article sets out a roadmap to this end, providing a detailed discussion of various developments in digital humanities, and analysing different possibilities in the international context. It is based on a survey conducted in 2016 among Finnish scholars in the fields of humanities and the social sciences, an analysis of existing infrastructures, and interviews with DH scholars involved with international top-level DH centres. The focus in the latter part of the article is on these interviews, and on the lessons learned abroad from which the Finnish DH community could benefit. We conclude with a strong call for collaboration to facilitate the further development of the DH field in Finland in response to international competition.

The needs of digital scholarship services at Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City

“…The need for digital teaching/learning activities was emphasized, particularly in terms of the provision of digital information resources and tools, as well as training in the use of digital methods and tools. The need for support from DSS for research covered all stages of the research process, including discovery, collection, and creation of digital assets; organization and management, annotation, enrichment and curation, processing, analysis, visualization, publication, dissemination, and communication of research assets (Kelpšienė, 2018; Matres, 2017; Matres et al ., 2018). The users' needs for DSSs were diverse, but they were expressed at different levels of specificity.…”

“…The research results indicate that the survey respondents showed interest in all the services belonging to the five groups of services. The need for digital teaching/learning activities was Matres, 2017;Matres et al, 2018). The users' needs for DSSs were diverse, but they were expressed at different levels of specificity.…”

“…The results support the previous studies showing that researchers in various fields of research often need services such as digitization, data storage and data management provided by libraries (Tzoc and Millard, 2017). The findings also indicate that research tools and methods are likely to be used more at specific stages of research, such as the search, access, and organization of research assets, and are less often used for the purposes of data curation and the dissemination of research results (Kelp sien_ e, 2018; Matres, 2017;Matres et al, 2018). This means that it is necessary to provide services that support researchers, particularly in the LM 44,8/9 fields of social sciences and humanities, in order to improve their knowledge and skills in the area of the use of digital tools and methods, and the planning of data management (Mitchem and Rice, 2017;Zhou et al, 2019).…”

Putting the User in the Loop: Developing a Research Infrastructure for Social Sciences and Humanities Research

“…Unlike most previous research in these disciplines (Oberbichler et al, 2022), the discussion involved stakeholders with technical and non‐technical backgrounds. This allowed us to highlight from early stages the (common) critical development points for reducing the uncertainty that usually surrounds the creation of these facilities (Matres et al, 2018) and developing the RI in the most successful way possible. However, many of these information needs have been recurrently identified over time (Star and Ruhleder, 1994), problematic that may respond to the fact that the focus is usually placed on technical concerns without considering the distinct scholarly practices between SSH scholars and computer/data scientists.…”

“…Fourth, a good RI for the DH and CSS is one that promotes collaboration between the stakeholders of the RI , especially in terms of finding partners and ideas for conducting DH and CSS research. Fostering this type of alliances from the information service could be a way of lowering the barrier for those who remain uncertain about the use of computational approaches in the fields of SSH (Craig, 2015; Matres et al, 2018).…”