Or, Adventures of an Amateur Ethnographer

Meg MeimanUniversity of Delaware

meiman@udel.edu

Studying Scholars: Reading and Research Practices in a

Digital Environment

The (Lone) Humanities Scholar at Work

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and ProjectMuse

I blame Lorraine Daston

“How do art historians learn to see, historians learn to read, philosophers to argue? What is the history of the art-historical slide collection, the initiation into archival research, the graduate seminar?...What about an epistemology based upon the practices of humanists, on what they do?”

Lorraine Daston, “Whither Critical Inquiry?”Critical Inquiry

All I did was ask…

How do scholars read online?

How do we conduct research online?

What online sources do scholars use when conducting research?

What I’ll tackle in the next 15 minutes

Literature review what’s been done thus far

Survey results about online sources preliminary, but interesting

Results from interviews about reading practices limited sample of scholars at my institution

Conclusions and possible future directions

Laying the groundwork…

Review of existing literature generally falls into one or more of these categories:

Citation analyses

Information-seeking behavior

Ethnographic studies (some include reading practices)

Citation, citation, citation

Citation analysistracking the most commonly-cited books or articles

• used by anyone going up for tenure, to measure citation impact of their work

counting the format of sources used in a monograph• used for collection management in academic libraries• used to gauge disciplinary boundaries of a field

Not always reliable, given inaccuracy of citations (e.g., citing JSTOR articles as print sources)

Where do you go for information?

Information-seeking behavior

University of Rochester’s survey of graduate studentsfrom multiple disciplines

Tibbo’s (U.S.) and Anderson’s (UK) survey of academic historians

Barrett’s interviews with humanities graduate students at the University of Western Ontario

How do you do what you do?

Ethnographic studies

Unsworth’s identification of primitives, and how online tools can better reflect them discovering annotating comparing referring sampling illustrating representing

Palmer, Teffeau, and Pirmann’s assessment of degree to which humanities scholars exhibit primitives Rely heavily on re-reading and note-taking Typically consult rather than collaborate with colleagues Re-reading is often used as a ‘prime’ for writing

Sukovic’s ethnographic study of humanities scholars’ interactions with electronic texts Netchaining – scholars combine aspects of networking with information-seeking practices

How do you read online?

Reading practices

Tenopir and King’s study of online journal reading practices among academics from several disciplines

Hillesun’s interviews with scholars about their reading practices

All I did was ask…

How do scholars read online?

How do we conduct research online?

What online sources do scholars use when conducting research?

From 24 responses to 278 (thanks, Twitter!)

Survey questions distributed via listservs

14-question survey centered on what sources scholars use

Audience included academics from several humanities disciplines

Analysis of responses done via qualitative methods (hand-coding for frequency)

Who are you?

0%10%20%30%40%50%

48%

25% 12%9% 6% 7%

Respondents by disciplinary area

Lite

ratu

re -

45%

Boo

k hi

stor

y - 2

0%

Histo

ry -

13%

Art h

isto

ry -

4%

Cultu

ral h

isto

ry -

4%

Mus

ic -

3%

Rel

igio

n - 2

%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

What technologies do you regularly use?

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

62%57%

38%

26%24%

Column2

What free websites and collections do you use?

Goo

gle Boo

ks -

89%

Amaz

on.com

- 71

%

Wik

iped

ia -

71%

Goo

gle Sc

hola

r - 6

8%

LC's col

lect

ions

- 62

%

Proje

ct G

uten

berg

- 55

%

0%

30%

60%

90%

Free websites and collections (cont’d)

0%

4%

8%

12%

Reasons for using free websites and collections…

Background Research

Primary Sources to cite

or use

Secondary Sources to cite

or use

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

94%

72% 70%

Reasons for using free sites (cont’d)

Bibliographical analysis

Tracking/checking references or quotations

Finding more sources

Finding images for analysis

Satire/surprise: “Sometimes the google or wiki results are so bad as to be hilarious or useful as cautionary.”

What subscription-based sites do you use?

JSTO

R -

99%

Proje

ctM

use - 8

8%

MLA

- 52

%

ECCO -

35%

EEBO -

34%

Hist.

Abstr

acts

- 26

%

ARTst

or -

22%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

99% 88%

52%35% 34% 26% 22%

Subscription-based sites (cont’d)

Amer

ican

Per

iodi

cal S

erie

s

Wor

ldCat

Early A

mer

ican

Im

prin

ts

Amer

ica's Histo

rica

l

Amer

ica

Histo

ry &

Life

OED

Onlin

e

ProQues

t's D

isse

rtat

ions

ProQues

t's B

ritish

Per

iodi

cals

Acces

sibl

e Arc

hives

DNB

ProQues

t's H

isto

rica

l New

spap

ers

0%1%2%3%4%5%6%7%8%

Reasons for using subscription-based sites

Secondary sources to use in research - 93%

Primary sources to cite or use - 71%

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

93%83%

71%

How do you begin your research? (rank ‘em)

bibliography or reference list from a book or article

book stacks and bound journals at the librarydatabases via the library's website (ARTstor,

JSTOR, MLA, Project Muse, etc.)free websites and online collectionsindividual journals I personally subscribe tolibrary catalogsearch engines

Ways researchers begin their research

0%

20%

40%

60%

80% 63%

28% 25% 24% 22% 22% 21%

Ways researchers begin their work (cont’d)

othe

r sc

hola

rs

pers

onal

col

lect

ions

prim

ary so

urce

arch

ival

or sp

ecia

l col

lect

ions

0%4%8%

12%14%

3% 3% 2%

Conceptually speaking

When beginning a project, researchers generally started both broad and specific.

Most common written answer: “it depends”

“Sometimes I think I’m just looking for a quick answer, and then it turns into a project.”

“Start with as many copies…as I can find in books, periodicals, audio, online, etc. Then develop questions about authorship, publishing, reception, etc. Seek answers in published research, in primary documents … Digest, synthesize, write.”

Collecting and organizing research material

Word-pro-

cessed docu-ment; 73%

Email citations to self;

62%

Print out online

sources; 60%

Photo-copy print

sources; 58%

Save citations in program;

30%

Word-processed documentEmail citations to selfPrint out online sourcesPhotocopy print sources

Other affordances

saving pdf's handwriting notes

web-based programs

digitizing print material

0%

1%

2%

3%

4%

5%

5%4% 4%

2%

Interviews with Univ. of Delaware scholars

Interviewed 4 participants: Two graduate students in literature (one master’s

level, one doctoral level) Two full professors, one in in literature, one in history

Interviews lasted an average of 1 hour each

Questions centered on individual research projects, and process of reading, researching, and note-taking

Reading practices

Practices vary based on project and personal research methodology history

B [history professor] has to consult primary sources in a Latin script – moves slowly through online material (reads with “soft eyes”)

C [doctoral student] reads print books almost exclusively, using the library stacks – skims title and TOC – eventually reads books cover to cover, with a pencil in hand (“attentive skimming”).

A [master’s student] uses cached web pages when searching online – skims TOC in books (both print and online), and scans library books for later reading.

D [literature professor] has to consults reprints of primary sources, so also reads closely (“I’m not a digital native, and I know that…I’m a complete and utter believer in the artifact”).

Research practices

All participants use word-processing programs to organize bibliographies and annotations (D organizes list of works and notes chronologically, to help with recall; A uses JSTOR and ProjectMuse for saving citations as well as research)

All participants download journal articles to keep for further consultation – importance of gathering a personal collection

D & C print out annotations from Word documents and re-read notes before handwriting additional annotations

A, B, and D print out articles they need to read intensively; C (the library stacks researcher) chooses online only, but doesn’t process information as well as with printed and hand-annotated articles

Final thoughts/future directions

Personal collections, whether print or online, form the basis and often the starting point of humanities scholars’ work

Future studies of reading practices of humanities scholars need to encompass annotation and other writing practices

Digital platforms need to be developed to allow for more seamless movement between online reading/skimming and annotation

Acknowledging my own invisible college…

my survey participants, without whom this study would not exist

Patrick Leary and William McCarty, who posted the survey link on SHARP-L and Humanist listservs, respectively

Patricia Hwse, Digital Collections Curator at Penn State University Libraries, who tweeted the survey link for me

L-C19-Americanists listserv moderator, who posted the survey link

Jeff Lang and Devin McGinty at GradShare, who allowed me to post the survey link

I’d like to thank the Academy…

Dr. Lynnette Overby, my supervisor who gave me leave time from my job to pursue this project

Christine Yacyshyn, for teaching me the beauty of graphs

Professor Jim Brophy, whose response to my paper for his history of the book course inspired this entire project

You – thank you for your time and attention