Creating an Archive for Rotuma: A Personal Account

This essay is an account of the author’s experiences in collecting and assembling cultural and historical materials related to the island of Rotuma and to Rotuman communities in diaspora. The resultant archives are to be housed at the University of Hawai‘i’s Pacific Collection in both physical and digital forms. They include field notes dating back to research begun in 1959 that has been ongoing to the present as well as an array of published and unpublished documents collected from libraries, museums, and archives from around the world. A major goal of establishing the archive, particularly in its digital form, is to provide optimal access to persons of Rotuman ancestry as a form of repatriation that will encourage them to explore their cultural and historical heritage in the interest of adding substance to their cultural identity, and to provide enhanced opportunities for Rotuman scholars to assess the materials so that they can generate their own accounts of the Rotuman experience

Searching for the past : Historian\u27s information-seeking behavior and needs.

The article examines information-seeking behavior of academic historians and their information searching needs. It discusses the impact of 1980s digital revolution on academic historians\u27 research practices, surveys conducted to study on utilization of academic librarians and library materials in information-seeking practices

“Quietly Incomplete”: Academic Historians, Digital Archival Collections, and Historical Research in the Web Era

Since the early 1990s, archives institutions largely have approached digital archival collections with an “if we build it, they will come” mentality. But the extent and motivations of use for traditional and emerging patron groups are constantly evolving, and the factors or conditions that characterize use vary wildly in the web environment. As part of a broader study investigating how academic historians utilize and interact with digital archival collections, this paper details the findings of a pilot project involving a citation analysis, survey, and semi-structured interviews with academic historians from a medium-sized Carnegie Research 1 university. This limited exploratory study attempts to identify characteristics and conditions of digital archival collection use and gather firsthand accounts about the benefits, limitations, challenges, and utility of digital archival collections to this cohort’s research. The authors found that these resources are valued but underutilized due to ongoing issues with accessibility and availability, and that digital archival collections on the web continue to be “quietly incomplete” even as they grow in number, volume, and subject. The authors call for further research involving academic historians and other key user groups to inform institutional approaches to the design, creation, and development of digital archival collections for all users

Data fluidity in DARIAH -- pushing the agenda forward

This paper provides both an update concerning the setting up of the European DARIAH infrastructure and a series of strong action lines related to the development of a data centred strategy for the humanities in the coming years. In particular we tackle various aspect of data management: data hosting, the setting up of a DARIAH seal of approval, the establishment of a charter between cultural heritage institutions and scholars and finally a specific view on certification mechanisms for data

Measuring the impact of digital heritage collections using Google Scholar

This study aimed to measure the impact of digital heritage collections by analysing the citations received in scholarly outputs. Google Scholar was used to retrieve the scholarly outputs citing Memòria Digital de Catalunya (MDC), a cooperative, open-access repository containing digitized collections related to Catalonia and its heritage. The number of documents citing MDC has grown steadily since the creation of the repository in 2006. Most citing documents are scholarly outputs in the form of articles, proceedings and monographs, and academic theses and dissertations. Citing documents mainly pertain to the humanities and the social sciences and are in local languages. The most cited MDC collection contains digitized ancient Catalan periodicals. The study shows that Google Scholar is a suitable tool for providing evidence of the scholarly impact of digital heritage collections. Google Scholar indexes the full-text of documents, facilitating the retrieval of citations inserted in the text or in sections that are not the final list of references. It also indexes document types, such as theses and dissertations, which contain a significant share of the citations to digital heritage collections

Image as Evidence: A Citation Analysis of Visual Resources in American History Scholarship, 2010–2014

The author examines the use of visual resources in American history scholarship over a five-year period. The article reports on a citation analysis of 554 images published in two top American history journals from 2010 through 2014. The data collected in this study documents the extent to which images were used in history research and the types of libraries and archival repositories from which historians accessed images. Based on the study data, the article explores characteristics of frequently cited libraries and archival repositories, the capacity in which images function as historical evidence, and implications for libraries based on the findings

Human Selection and Digitized Archival Collections: an Exploratory Research Project About Choice of Archival Materials Digitized for Online Public Availability

Our collective memory, the history that is cultivated through reflection, documentation, and consensus of historical data, is predicated upon the citizenry having access to the historical materials that society has created. Digitization has enabled greater public access to those materials. However, are items being scanned or digitally photographed to create surrogates that are then not made available to the world? The impetus for this study is to delve into whether or not intentional or unintentional personal choices play a role in determining which items archivists transform into digital surrogates; both in the decision of what to digitize and what to make available to the public on the World Wide Web. When one archival collection is prioritized over another or when it is not possible to digitize an entire collection, what rationale is used to determine which items will be digitized and published online? Do intentional or unintentional personal choices come into play in the decision-making? To answer these questions, four case studies were conducted, involving the random sampling of online collections and concomitant interviews of archivists. The purpose of this study is to enhance archivists’ understanding of the reasons that guide the digitization decision-making process. Through such understanding, archivists can be more proactive in the decision-making process to realize the benefit of digitizing and publishing archival materials that ultimately affect collective memory. The findings of this research revealed that in the case of the four institutions assessed, archivists do use personal choice to determine which materials within an archive are digitized

Elektronički izvori znanstvenih informacija za povjesničare i uloga knjižnica u podršci znanstvenome radu

Rad opisuje specifičnosti istraživačkog rada humanističkih znanstvenika s naglaskom na potragu za znanstvenom literaturom te objašnjava zašto su humanisti nešto kasnije od drugih znanstvenika započeli koristiti elektroničke znanstvene izvore. Autorica donosi klasifikaciju elektroničkih izvora za povjesničare i raspravlja o najvažnijim predstavnicima svake vrste e-izvora, njihovim prednostima i ograničenjima. Nadalje, upućuje na znanstvene knjižnice (općeznanstvene, visokoškolske, specijalne) kao mjesta koja stvaraju svoje elektroničke zbirke, osiguravaju pristup drugim elektroničkim zbirkama i humanistima nude i tradicionalne i nove usluge kao pomoć u snalaženju u suvremenom informacijskom okruženju