The digital transformation processes for supporting digital humanities researchers in text analysis
| Date | 24 November 2023 |
| Pages | 378-391 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2022-0143 |
| Published date | 24 November 2023 |
| 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 | Ernesto William De Luca,Francesca Fallucchi,Bouchra Ghattas,Riem Spielhaus |
The digital transformation
processes for supporting digital
humanities researchers in
text analysis
Ernesto William De Luca
Georg-Eckert-Institut Leibniz-Institut f€
ur Bildungsmedien Braunschweig,
Niedersachsen, Germany
Francesca Fallucchi
Georg-Eckert-Institut Leibniz-Institut f€
ur Bildungsmedien Braunschweig,
Niedersachsen, Germany and
Dipartimento di Scienze Ingegneristiche, Guglielmo Marconi University,
Rome, Italy, and
Bouchra Ghattas and Riem Spielhaus
Georg-Eckert-Institut Leibniz-Institut f€
ur Bildungsmedien Braunschweig,
Niedersachsen, Germany
Abstract
Purpose –This article aims to explore how the mapping strategies between user requirements expressed by
the humanities researchers lead to a better customization of user-driven digital humanities tools and to the
creation of innovative functionalities, which can directly affect the way of doing researchin a digital context.
Design/methodology/approach –It describes the user-driven development of a tool that helps researchers
in the quantitative and qualitative analysis of large textbook collections.
Findings –This article presents an exemplary user journey map, which shows the different steps of the digital
transformation process and how the humanities researchers are involved for (1) producing innovativeresearch
solutions, comprehensive and personalized reports, and (2) customizing access to content data used for the
analysis of digital documents. The article is based on a case study on a German textbooks collection and
content analysis functionalities.
Originality/value –The focus of this article is the reiterative research process, in which humanists
(from the human centred point of view) starts from an initial research question, using quantitative and
qualitative data and develops both the research question and the answers to it by with the aim to find
patterns in the content and structure of educational media. Thus, from the viewpoint of digital
transformation the humanist is part of the interaction between digitization and digitalization processes,
where he/she uses digital data, metadata, reportsand findings created and supported by the digital tools for
research analysis.
Keywords Digital humanities, Digital transformation, Corpus analysis, Educational media
Paper type Article
1. Introduction
The availability of digitised or digital born text sources provides new opportunities for both
humanities scholars and computer scientists: humanities scholars can access an enormous
volume of digitised texts and computer scientists are developing innovative solutions to help
with their analysis.
Thisshift from reading a single,printed, book to the optionto browse many digitaltexts is at
the heart of the digital humanities (DH) domain, which helps to develop solutions for the
handling of vast amounts of data. New research questions arise from work in the DH:
computationalmethods may support raising innovative research questions in the humanities.
JD
80,2
378
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 4 July 2022
Revised 13 February 2023
Accepted 16 February 2023
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 2, 2024
pp. 378-391
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-07-2022-0143
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