The Researcher as Curator in the Digital Age: Personal Collections and User Needs in Art History

Abstract

Collecting information for research and teaching purposes is a practice followed by scholars across a variety of disciplines. In art history, more specifically, the gathering of research material and the building of personal collections has been a habitual activity that follows the seeking and discovery of information. However, there have been few studies so far examining the collecting behaviour of scholars; thus, there is little information available on how researchers collect and use the gathered material afterwards. Therefore, the aim of the present paper is to focus on the needs art historians have when they create, use and curate their personal research collections. Understanding the key role this standard activity plays in research, as well as the criteria upon which scholars' personal collections are built and managed can bring useful results for the facilitation of the research process in terms of customised digital tools and services for scholars. Finally, this paper is based on research for my current PhD Thesis “Personal Research Collections: examining research practices and user needs in art historical research” conducted at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, under the supervision of Prof. Claire Warwick & Mr Simon Mahony.

Information sensorium as a framework to read images: an interdisciplinary investigation on "reading images" using the Wayfarer Triptych by Jheronimus Bosch as a case study

“…Art critic David Carrier (2004) (Floridi, 2001(Floridi, , 2014Kamposiori et al, 2019;Nowotny, 2015;Pugh, 2019;Schnapp, 2011) 104 . Information behaviour scholars like Wilson (1981Wilson ( , 1999 and Wilson and Walsh (1996) recognised the varying individual information-seeking behaviours, roles, and environments.…”

“…and modifying our realities 121 , the informational environment or, in Boulding's words, human nature. The radical transformation of the world sees more transitions from analogue to digital and convergence between digital tools and resources, changing the way we create, sense, discover, organise, interact and interpret information (Floridi, 2001(Floridi, , 2014Kamposiori et al, 2019;Nanetti et al, 2013;Nowotny, 2015;Pugh, 2019;Schnapp, 2011), excavate and aggregate meanings (Ker & Sum, 2018;Nanetti et al, 2015). The "informatisation" of objects and the whole (social)…”

“…According to Robert Storr (as cited by Hitchins, 2014), art history is "not a science-based on proof, nor even a philosopher edifice built upon strict, incontrovertible logic", but as a system to "aid viewers in grasping the complexity and experiencing the aura of works of art". The digital age has profoundly transformed how knowledge is created and the paradigms of modern education, research, and learning into evolving fields, such as digital humanities and digital art history (Churchill & Barratt-Pugh, 2020;Kamposiori et al, 2019;Pugh, 2019). As emphasised by Churchill and Barratt-Pugh, Mann et al (2018, p. 13).…”

“… See Pugh (2019) andKamposiori et al (2019) for discussion on the impact of technological developments in art history.2 Information, Image and Meaning: Critical Discourses on Reading Images…”