Struggling with digitized historical newspapers: Contextual barriers to information interaction in history research activities

Abstract

On account of the complexities related to the use of digitized newspapers, researchers may encounter barriers when interacting with the collections' content. Overcoming barriers that could influence their information interaction should enhance the accessibility and utility of the newspapers. Hence, the study examined the barriers faced in history‐research tasks involving interaction with digitized historical newspapers, with focus on the barriers' contexts and the related task‐based activities. The analysis employed two datasets, from in‐depth interviews and demonstrations of newspaper‐use situations. Content analysis from these complementary data showed that barriers arose in multiple contexts, connected with the collection, task, tools, and socio‐organizational setting. Most barriers were associated with collection context and occurred in information searching and selection activities and in working with information items. Barriers related to the task or to socio‐organizational context arose most often in the planning and monitoring activities and in synthesizing and reporting. Such research‐based insight into the barriers faced can aid in illuminating what is required for providing good support to researchers working with digital newspaper content.

Optical character recognition quality affects subjective user perception of historical newspaper clippings

“…Järvelin et al ., 2016; Bazzo et al ., 2020). As Kumpulainen and Late (2022) show empirically, noise in OCR quality disturbs researchers of historical newspaper collections both in the searching and selection phases of their research. In general, bad OCR quality concerns all users of the collections, although the quality may manifest differently to different user groups.…”

“…Yet, as recent empirical studies attest (e.g. Kumpulainen and Late, 2022; Late and Kumpulainen, 2021), the use of such collections is prone to be negatively affected by the noise present in digitized documents, caused by the errors made during the OCR process. However, the core question of how the variation in OCR quality affects the user has proved to be evasive.…”

Task information types related to data gathering in media studies

“…Mayernik (2019) also considers metadata processes and products important in supporting day-to-day research tasks and meeting the requirements of funders, journals and data repositories. Kumpulainen and Late (2022) found that lacking or improper metadata was one obstacle to successful uses of newspaper contents in the history research domain.…”

Value co‐creation in cultural heritage information practices: Literature review and future agenda: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…In other words, cultural information practices can be carried out through their online platforms or mobile applications even if they are not physically present at the cultural heritage institution. In recent years, many large-scale cultural heritage digitization projects have leveraged this virtual collaboration to carry out a range of impactful tasks (Davidson & Reid, 2022;Kumpulainen & Late, 2022;Owens, 2013).…”

“…For example, Tencent, one of China's Internet giants, has launched the TANYUAN Project (https://tanyuan.qq.com/home) in recent years to digitize cultural heritage to help the VCC from different perspectives. Academic institutions can contribute to cultural heritage information practices by providing expertise and scientific research (Zhao et al, 2020), and many high-impact cultural heritage digitization projects have the support of academic institutions (Hu et al, 2018;Kumpulainen & Late, 2022;Liang et al, 2020;Price, 2016;Tedd, 2011). Finally, both traditional mass media and emerging social media are important channels to help publicize and promote information practices in the cultural heritage field (Sabharwal, 2021;Tedd, 2011).…”