Exploring the digital humanities research agenda: a text mining approach
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2021-0066 |
| Published date | 26 November 2021 |
| Date | 26 November 2021 |
| Pages | 853-870 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Soohyung Joo,Jennifer Hootman,Marie Katsurai |
Exploring the digital humanities
research agenda: a text
mining approach
Soohyung Joo
School of Information Science, University of Kentucky,
Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Jennifer Hootman
William T. Young Library, University of Kentucky,
Lexington, Kentucky, USA, and
Marie Katsurai
Department of Intelligent Information Engineering and Sciences,
Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
Abstract
Purpose –This study aims to explore knowledge structure and research trends in the domain of digital
humanities (DH) in the recent decade. The study identified prevailing topics and then, analyzed trends of such
topics over time in the DH field.
Design/methodology/approach –Research bibliographic data in the area of DH were collected from
scholarly databases. Multiple text mining techniques were used to identify prevailing research topics and
trends, such as keyword co-occurrences, bigram analysis, structural topic models and bi-term topic models.
Findings –Term-level analysis revealed that cultural heritage, geographic information, semantic web, linked
data and digital media were among the most popular topics in the recent decade. Structural topic models
identified that linked open data, text mining, semantic web and ontology, text digitization and social network
analysis received increased attention in the DH field.
Originality/value –This study applied existent text mining techniques to understandthe research domain in
DH. The study collected a large set of bibliographic text, representing the area of DH from multiple academic
databases and explored research trends based on structural topic models.
Keywords Trend analysis, Digital humanities, Text mining, Bibliographic data, Research topic analysis
Paper type Research paper
Introduction and background
Despite the long-contested and quickly evolving nature of what is now commonly referred to
as digital humanities (DH), most humanists agree upon an early pioneer in humanities
computing, the Italian Jesuit priest, Father Roberto Busa. Father Busa’s work in applying
computing to his humanist objective makes for as good of an origin story as any. In 1949,
Busa set out to create an index of all the words in St. Thomas Aquinas’(and related authors)
works, totaling an impressive 11 million medieval Latin words. To accomplish this, Busa
sought the support of IBM’s CEO, Thomas Watson, eventually creating a punch-card
lemmatized concordance (Hockey, 2004). Over the next five decades, the field took on a
variety of labels including Humanist Informatics, Literary and Linguistic computing and
Humanities Computing (Nyhan and Flinn, 2016). In 2004, 55 years after he started his
groundbreaking, monumental work, Busa wrote the foreword to A Companion to Digital
Humanities which formally introduced the term “digital humanities”(Brandeis
Library, 2012).
In the 16 years since its introduction, the term, “digital humanities,”has been widely
adopted. Even though we have a broad acceptance of the term, its definition and boundaries
remain contested. The varied ways of defining digital humanities are evidenced in Matthew
Digital
humanities
research
agenda
853
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 23 March 2021
Revised 27 July 2021
25 October 2021
Accepted 26 October 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 4, 2022
pp. 853-870
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-03-2021-0066
K. Gold’sDebates in Digital Humanities (2012). For instance, John Unsworth stated that digital
humanities are “using computational tools to do the work of the humanities”(Gold, 2012,
p. 67). Julia Flanders explained that “digital humanities is a critical investigation and practice
of the methods of humanities research in the digital medium”(Gold, 2012, p. 69). Ernesto
Priego, with a slightly different take, defined digital humanities as “the scholarly study and
use of computers and computer culture to illuminate the human record”(Gold, 2012, p. 69).
Looking ahead, Ed Finn, expounded on the future of DH and said,
I think digital humanities, like social media, is an idea that will increasingly become invisible as new
methods and platforms move from being widely used to being ubiquitous. For now, digital
humanities defines the overlap between humanities research and digital tools. But the humanities are
the study of cultural life, and our cultural life will soon be inextricably bound up with digital media.
(Gold, 2012, p. 68)
Finally, Matthew K. Gold shares his explanation of DH as “both a field with a discernible set
of academic lineages, practices, and methodologies and a vague umbrella term used to
describe the application of digital technology to traditional humanistic inquiry.”Importantly,
he adds that “what sets DH apart from many other humanities fields is its methodological
commitment to building things as a way of knowing”(Gold, 2012, pp. 68–69).
However, one chooses to define DH, there are hallmarks that are part of the nature of the
field. These hallmarks include the application of technology to a research question(s);
collaboration between disciplines, services, programs and departments; iterative nature of
projects requiring an attitude of experimentation and problem-solving; critically questioning
the role and impact of the technology; creating space to ask new questions; and bringing new
ways of exploring old data.
From the early days of humanities computing to DH today, the object of the field’s
research agenda has shifted in a number of directions. Though text and its analysis remain a
popular object of research, it is no longer the focus of the conversation. Other objects of focus
and methodologies have been pushing the DH research agenda in more recent years
particularly as a more diverse group in academe become involved in DH projects, research
and teaching. For instance, academic librarians have been documenting their own role in DH
collaborations with campus faculty. They have been providing critical reflections on how
they support DH work and build their library’s capacity to engage in DH partnerships on
campus (Edmond et al., 2020;Hartsell-Gundy, 2015;Logsdon et al., 2017;Siemens et al., 2010,
2011). In 2015, Hartsell-Gundy et al. edited a volume that has become a touchstone resource
for subject-specialist librarians. Their work sought to provide librarians with a sense of what
is digital humanities and what kind of campus relationships are typically needed. The text
also illuminated avenues and examples of collaboration in DH initiatives for subject
librarians. On the heels of this edited volume came an article from Bello et al. (2017) detailing a
capacity-building DH activity among librarians from two different divisions in the library.
This was an example of “learn by doing”in which the librarians used DH analysis tools to
investigate collection development trends. Further, the authors advocated for librarians to
leverage DH tools and applications in their own research and not solely engage in a
supportive role on DH projects.
Logsdon et al. (2017) tackled the rising issue of a librarian’s labor in DH projects. Looking
at the structural inequality in academic labor, the authors advocate for making a librarian’s
expertise as a discourse mediator and affective labor more explicitly known. Although there
are many disparate topics within the professional library and information science (LIS)
literature centering on digital humanities, another area of focus is sustainability. Edmond’s
et al. (2020) research findings hold that sustainability considerations and planning for DH
projects should not only address data and technology but also the people involved –the user
community, communications and knowledge management.
JD
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