Measuring digital humanities learning requirements in Spanish & English-speaking practitioner communities

Abstract

Technology is global, but our use of it is subtly local. Digital scholarship in the humanities is no different. Where one is doing digital scholarship affects the types of methods and tools one will find most fruitful for humanities research. This paper considers global variations in digital humanities tool demand, by comparing broad patterns in digital skill-seeking through Programming Historian tutorial web traffic data. Programming Historian is a multilingual open learning resource publishing digital humanities tutorials in four languages. Its tutorials have played an important role for scholars seeking to learn about new tools and skills in digital humanities. Drawing on a unique dataset of 3.7 million visitors to Programming Historian between May 2019 and May 2022, this paper looks for patterns of regional use to identify skills most and least in demand in certain parts of the world. It does so through a pair of case studies that look at the top three national sources of anonymised web traffic to the English-language publication (United States, India, United Kingdom) and Spanish-language publication (Spain, Mexico, Colombia). The resultant conclusions identify key differences in skill-seeking both across the language divide (English / Spanish) and in different countries, some of which can be explained by cultural, economic, and bureaucratic factors. The paper concludes that while the specific variations of need will evolve, they will continue to exist, and digital humanities educators should adopt practices that acknowledge those differences and make space for local experts to define and best serve those needs.