Pleas'd By a Newe Inuention?: Assessing the Impact of Early English Books Online on Teaching and Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Lindquist, Thea; Wicht, Heather

doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2007.01.011

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…All of these issues make it difficult and time‐consuming for faculty and students to select online primary sources for classroom use or research. Furthermore, once students find relevant sources, they struggle with challenges inherent to primary‐source research: foreign languages, lack of context, document bias, historical usage, orthography, grammar, and paleography or typography, just to name a few (Lindquist and Wicht, 2007). Given these challenges, it is not surprising that time‐strapped faculty rely on published readers to expose students to primary sources, or that students turn to Wikipedia for contextual information.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How can educational technology facilitate student engagement with online primary sources?

Lindquist

Long

2011

Library Hi Tech

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PurposeThe authors received a grant to develop a digital educational tool to facilitate student engagement with online primary sources. Students and faculty were interviewed prior to developing the tool's specifications to ensure a user‐centered focus. This research paper seeks to report the results of a user needs assessment that explored students' use of primary sources and their learning preferences, as well as faculty's pedagogical goals for student work with primary sources.Design/methodology/approachFaculty, graduate, and undergraduate students enrolled in humanities courses at the University of Colorado at Boulder were interviewed to help guide the development of this tool. The interview transcripts were analyzed to uncover several key findings.FindingsThe results of the user needs assessment suggest that primary sources have great potential to excite students' enthusiasm and enhance their learning experiences; however, these materials present several challenges that prevent students from using digital primary‐source collections to the fullest extent. Educational technology may be able to help students overcome these difficulties, but only if the technology is easy‐to‐use and designed to support faculty's pedagogical goals.Research limitations/implicationsThis study employed a semi‐structured interview methodology to collect the relevant data. Its central research questions could be explored in greater depth using other user‐centered design methodologies, such as artifact and task analyses.Practical implicationsThis research will be used to inform the development of a digital educational tool for student use with primary sources.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the growing body of research on user needs for effective work with online primary sources in university‐level humanities education.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How can educational technology facilitate student engagement with online primary sources?

Lindquist

Long

2011

Library Hi Tech

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“…82–83). Given that scholars and students are increasingly relying on digital images as primary sources for historical research (Terras, ; Deegan & Sutherland, ; and Lindquist & Wicht, ), an archaeology of these digitizations authorizes a consideration, or at least promotes consciousness, of underserved modes of engagement that may include touch or taste or smell, and the deliberate silence around them. The digitization, then, emerges from the archaeology as not merely a palimpsest of a historical object and its modern representation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Archaeology of a digitization

Mak

2014

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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This study proposes an archaeology as a means of exploring the practices by which digitally encoded resources are generated, circulated, and received. The discussion grapples with the ambiguous relationship between digitizations and their exemplars in the wellknown database, Early English Books Online (EEBO), and suggests ways in which digitizations might be analyzed as witnesses of current perceptions about the past and used accordingly in scholarly research. The article therefore offers a critical reading of EEBO and its digitizations as part of a broader effort to investigate the role of digitally encoded resources in the transmission of ideas and the production of cultural heritage.The proliferation of digitized materials for both popular and scholarly audiences has stimulated widespread interest in the relationship between these new materials and the documents, books, and artefacts that they represent. Although investigations of digital reproductions have highlighted the notion of remediation, what has not yet been considered in detail is the ontological rift that separates digitizations from their exemplars, the ramifications of such a rift, and how we might embark on productive and critical interpretations of the digitized sources.1 Debates continue to be waged about the appropriate treatment of digital materials in libraries and archives, 2 but we can in the meantime deepen our understanding of these entities by exploring their role in the production of knowledge. To this end, the present study is conceived as an archaeology that excavates for consideration the discursive practices by which digitizations are produced, circulated, and received. This particular conception of archaeology was popularized by Michel Foucault (1972) as a means of critical analysis, and will prove useful in making visible the scope and approach of the examination at hand. L.M.J. Delaissé advocated in 1976 similarly for an archaeology of medieval manuscripts that would be "the first step in any research based on manuscripts." He went on to explain that the method "guarantees that we are in possession of all the material facts revealing the life of these books and vital for understanding their contents" (p. 81). Just as Delaissé hoped that his archaeology would develop into a robust and well-rounded history of the medieval book, so too does the following study propose an archaeology that lays the foundation for a future history of the digitization. The article will therefore perform an excavation of a particular project in digitization, introducing for discussion the constitution of that project, how we might interpret the conditions in which its digitizations circulate, and how we might approach similar initiatives as sites of critical analysis.

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