Ingrida Kelpšienė is a junior researcher and PhD candidate at Vilnius University Faculty of Communication.
This is the source
The article discusses the current situation in the adoption of digital tools and practices in the humanities and arts in Lithuania, based on a major European survey conducted by the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) in 2014 and 2015. The survey was aimed at understanding existing scholarly practices, methods and tools that are applied by researchers, as well as attitudes towards digital technologies in research and scholarship. This article analyzes specific aspects of scholarly research activities and digital needs in Lithuania, and provides evidence-based insights on the national digital humanities landscape.
Analyzes scholarly research activities and digital needs in Lithuania, providing evidence-based insights on the national digital humanities landscape.
Digital Humanities can be broadly characterized as the adoption of an array of
computational methodologies for humanities research Digital Humanities is not a unified field but
an array of convergent practices that explore a
universe in which: a) print is no longer the exclusive or the normative
medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead,
print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations; and b)
digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and
dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social
sciences.
While scholarly practices are in the very essence of the concept, defying and
understanding them remains an important task for researchers, especially in the
field of information behavior, its management, curation and communication, and
use of digital technologies within information science. The nature of digital
humanities as an interdisciplinary field, where research practice continues on
developing differently within separate research areas, or (even more so) it
tends to hinge on a single project or individual research, entails inevitable
complexity. Nowadays, the enhancement of the scholarly research process is being
challenged by the need to build an infrastructure for digital scholarship
similar to that already established in the sciences, commonly identified as
The exclusion of processes in scholarly work, such as changing, browsing and
extracting, is an important part of the information behavior research scholarly
primitives
, the term describing scholarly activities, which are
independent from theoretical orientation and cross the boundaries of different
research disciplines methodological
commons
, as the set of the most common activities that inter-connect
different content, tools and methods
A digital humanities taxonomy, on the other hand, is a pragmatic expression of
classifying such activities and representing them in a categorized manner. In
2005, the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) ICT methods network started to
develop a taxonomy of computational methods, showcasing digital humanities in
practice in order to understand the impact of digital content, tools and methods
on humanities and arts scholarship content
types
, based on the nature of the content of the digital resource
employed, and, secondly, function
types
, based on the broad functions commonly undertaken in digital
resource creation processes
Another initiative on developing a Digital Humanities Taxonomy was launched by
Project Bamboo and its Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Directory, which focused on
allowing researchers to find and compare digital research resources and software
tools
A more profound view on scholarly work inevitably leads to the development of a
conceptual domain model, or ontology, that seeks to be more theoretically
rigorous than a taxonomy. Such an ontology could help to establish a common
understanding and vocabulary within the digital humanities community, to link
content, tools and methods and tackle their heterogeneity, as well as to
approach theoretical issues questioning critically the underlying processes of
contemporary scholarship
Research work on scholarly information behavior and needs, on taxonomies of
digital methods and tools and on conceptual modeling of the scholarly process
are the background for the investigation of the scholarly practices, digital
needs and attitudes of European researchers in the human sciences to enhance and support
digitally-enabled research across the arts and humanities
through the inception of a longitudinal mixed methods employed inn digitally-enabled arts and humanities work across Europe, ad through the digital dissemination, validation and enrichment of research outcomes by the scholarly community
The survey was launched in June 2014 and was open to respondents until March
2015
The main motivation of the survey project was to establish a baseline across
different European countries and scholarly disciplines with regard to
questions regarding the use of digital technologies to access, organize,
analyze and disseminate scholarly information resources ranging from
primary data to organized databases and scholarly publications
sought to collect reliable
evidence on essential aspects of scholarly information behavior and
attitudes rather than develop a full picture, something that would
require a much longer questionnaire as well as complementary research
instruments
while considering carefully how
many years should intervene before consecutive iterations of the survey,
as well as to initiate a multi-case studies research “aiming to provide
response on
how
and why
dimensions of scholarly practice
and needs in the digital environment
The research design of the survey relied on the prior work of the research team
focusing on proposed scholarly
research activity model
helping to better understand the research
process and its components Scholarly work involving digital resources, methods and
infrastructures was considered an integral activity encompassing all
stages of the research process, from the definition of research
questions and the orientation within a literature or domain to the
capture and constitution of salient evidence (data, resources), to
information seeking, management, curation, dissemination and use.
Infrastructure, under consideration included software applications
installed at the researchers’ computer, but also online services,
systems and tools, including pervasive, globally accessible commercial
digital infrastructures. Practices examined included both those based on
digital technologies and their non-digital counterparts, to ensure
meaningful comparisons between, e.g. using a digital device to consult a
particular kind of scholarly resource versus the use of an analogue
format for the same purpose.
Based on this approach and considering the main information activities
undertaken in the course of the scholarly work, the final set of survey
questions was selected to cover the five following areas:
The survey adopted a broader approach to its population of interest targeting researchers in the human sciences residing in Europe
who use, plan to use, or have an interest to know about the application
of digital resources, methods and tools
The analysis and interpretation of the survey results was undertaken by DiMPO
researchers who provided country-based reports of statistically-significant
results. This article is the presentation of the Lithuanian results on scholarly
work and the employment of digital methods and tools by the national digital
humanities community, conducted as part of this broader research. It seeks to
present the national position towards digital humanities and to provide insights
on the existing research community that is engaged or interested in using
various digital tools in scholarly work, based on the evident statistical
results, which has never been collected to systematically approach the issue
related to national information practice, even though the digitization of
cultural heritage and the creation of digital research data along with
digitally-enabled scholarly work has been going on in Lithuania for more than 20
years. The first study designed to analyze the effect of digital technologies
was done in 2003 in the area of archaeology and underlined an existing necessity
indicated by the majority of archaeologists to use digital data in research,
which was mainly driven by personal research interests network society
A purposive sampling process was adopted during the recruitment of the
Lithuanian respondents. The invitations to participate in the survey were sent
to eight accredited universitiesdigitally-enabled humanists
and
digitally-aware humanists
, both considered to be relevant to a
current state and development of the national digital humanities research
community. The study draws attention to scholars and actual scholarly work that
happens not only in digitization projects or within digital infrastructure, but
also very much depends on one’s personal attitudes and needs, thus contributing
to a better understanding of the national state of art digital research
environment.
The overall community of Lithuanian humanists working in higher education
consists of 1108 members
According to the age indicator, middle-aged respondents between 36 and 50 years
form the largest age group in the sample (53,3%) (see Figure 4). This suggests that the Lithuanian research community in
digital humanities is of more mature age while compared to the general
scientific community in Lithuania, where the majority of researchers working in
the area of higher education are from 25 to 35 years old
In addition, professional identity and background parameters were also considered in the survey. Most respondents (57,7%) confirmed being experienced researchers working for more than 10 years in research, which complies well with the age representation in the community. Another large group, represented by 29,9% of the respondents, have been engaged in research from 3 to 10 years. 8,8% of the respondents have worked as researchers for 1 to 3 years and only 3,6% of the respondents have worked as researchers for less than a year (see Figure 4).
In tandem with age and years spent in research, most of the respondents respectively defined their professional status as either senior researchers, e.g. full or associate professors (36,6%), or assistant professors and lecturers (36,4%). PhD students are also represented in the Lithuanian sample by 15,2%, while master’s students, junior or contract-based, independent and post-doctoral researchers are represented in the sample by very small proportions (see Figure 5). The latter composition suggests that the community of professionally employed digitally-aware humanities researchers in Lithuania mainly consists of experienced researchers usually having tenured or tenure-track academic status, whilst there is very low representation of starting researchers holding sessional (adjunct) lecturer or post-doctoral positions. It also indicates that contract-based academic workers are offered inadequate opportunities to conduct research in this area.
The majority of researchers (79,4%) are attached to universities, while only 14,5% of them work at research centres. Very few respondents are associated with a government department (2,3%), a private company (1,5%) or are independent researchers not attached to any institution (2,3%) (see Figure 6). The institutional affiliation suggests that much of digital research is done by academic community with universities being main facilitators of digital humanities, while other organizations or independent researchers may find less possibilities to conduct digital research projects.
The survey showed a heterogeneous representation of disciplines, as indicated by
Lithuanian digital humanities researchers. However, history is the most
frequently represented discipline within Lithuanian digital humanities (21,2%),
followed by linguistics and archaeology, which are equally represented by 16,8%
of respondents (see Figure 7). Furthermore, art,
history of art or visual studies is practiced by 13,3% of researchers, while
8,9% of respondents represent language and literature-related disciplines.
Traditionally, a significant leaning towards text-based disciplines, such as
history, linguistics and literature, is very common in digital humanities, while
the relation with archaeology is more complex even though archaeology havs been
at the forefront of using ICT methods and tools
Other digital humanities related disciplines identified by respondents in the sample are classics, anthropology or ethnology, museum studies, ethnic, gender or cultural studies, philosophy and medieval studies, all together forming up to no more than 18% percent of the sample (see Figure 7). 5,3% of respondents specified a discipline not mentioned in the list. Some specifically mentioned disciplines not in the original questionnaire are education, and music semiotics. Other scholars emphasized their engagement in cross-disciplinary research. It is also important to note that some disciplines presented in the survey, such as drama, theatre, or performance studies music, theology or religious studies and folklore, remain missing among national responses.
The comparison between national and European levels
The application of digital methods and the use of digital technologies in
research are the main indicators confirming the presence of digital humanities.
One of the goals of the survey was to measure to what extent digital media is
actually used in scholarly work, by asking the respondents to indicate whether
they use or are interested in using digital media for their research. The
interpretation of the responses in the Lithuanian context becomes even more
important as there is neither an explicit definition of the national digital
humanities, nor a well-established digital humanities research community
supporting the field. Moreover, the digitization of heritage and scientific data
in Lithuania faces major challenges, such as decentralization of national
digitization activities, low level of standardization, weak interinstitutional
cooperation and the lack of interoperability between different research
infrastructures
The frequency of using particular devices to consult research material strongly
relates to the type of material being accessed. E-publishing and online access
to journals and books expands the research possibilities for scholars, and has
many advantages in scope and speed over printed material. Most importantly, it
welcomes new means of communication by incorporating multimedia, hypermedia or
interactivity into published scholarly work. Scholarly journal publication is
shifting rapidly towards electronic formats, even if it has not yet benefited in
ways that online publishing in the hard and natural sciences has
It also emerges from the survey that mobile devices (e.g. tablets, smartphones, etc.) are increasingly used in research as well, even if not as widely as desktop and laptop computers. The most common kinds of research materials accessed by mobile device are maps (24,1%), audio resources (22,6%), video files and images (both 21,2%) (see Figure 9). All mentioned types of material tend to converge in the use of multimedia technologies, with mobile devices seeming to be more suitable for this purpose.
On the other hand, print or analogue access to research materials is still widely adopted by Lithuanian scholars. Books are most often used in print form (64,2%), as well as archival holdings, which are quite commonly (46,7%) studied by using some non-digital device or form. 30,7% scholars read printed scholarly articles and 21,2% view paper maps (see Figure 9).
The comparison between use of digital media and printed or analogue media shows
that digital devices are of greater use in all cases. However, to consult books
and archival holdings in print form or on an analogue device is still a common
practice among researchers. On the other hand, articles in scholarly journals or
conference proceedings are becoming far less commonly accessed in their printed
form, while images, maps, video and audio are mainly consulted in some digital
form and very rarely in printed or analogue form. The latter, and especially
video and audio resources, are also more likely to be consulted on mobile
devices, such as tablets and smartphones, even if these devices in general are
not as widely used as desktop and laptop computers. The greater use of mobile
devices to view maps, as well as audio and video material goes in line with the
most recent tendency to adopt these kinds of resources in interactive cultural
heritage representations by using new media and GPS based mobile applications.
It also relates with an emerging interest in mobile learning that has been
applied in the domain of digital heritage
The overall usage of desktop or laptop PC in scholarly work is considered to be a primary mean to consult research material among Lithuanian digital humanists, which tallies a broader European digital humanities practice (see Figure 10).
The only exception at the European level concerns books, as in this case the use
of printed books (87,60%) fairly surpasses the use digital books (62,50%)
The use of digital methods and tools is related to particular research
activities and serves the precise purpose of supporting a broader process in the
scholarly research lifecycle. Activity-centered models of scholarly information
work focus on core scholarly activities that are common across disciplines, such
as searching, collecting, reading, writing, collaborating, etc.
The respondents who stated that they already use digital methods and tools were also asked to specify which particular methods or tools they use. This open question allowed us to gain deeper insight in how researchers perceive the use of digital methods and tools, as well as to indicate the most popular of preferred digital methods and tools selected by researchers among broader possibilities. Responses were categorized into five groups, according to the explicit scholarly research processes related to them. Since responses comprise a mix of methods, or recurrent activities, and examples of applications mentioned together, they were separated into two groups where activities were matched with applications. The findings presented below aim to represent particular cases and provide grounded examples of individual research activities or digital methods that are relevant to research, as well as to name specific applications or tools used by digitally-aware Lithuanian humanities scholars. Some cases also take into account the frequency of occurrence of a specific response.
In order to discover and collect research assets, specific respondents stated that they access digital repositories, library catalogues or electronic text corpora covering national and international digital resources. Listed examples include well-known online repositories for searching and browsing ancient texts, such as the Perseus Digital Library [www.perseus.tufts.edu], the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae [http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu] and the Diogenes tool [http://community.dur.ac.uk], as well as corpora in modern languages, such as the British National Corpus [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk], the Corpus of the Contemporary American English [http://corpus.byu.edu/coca] and the German reference corpus [http://www.ids-mannheim.de/cosmas2] (see Table 1). National digital repositories mentioned include webpages oriented towards Lithuanistic research, such as [www.lituanistika.lt, www.tautosmenta.lt, http://donelaitis.vdu.lt, and http://coralit.lt] (see Table 1).
It is no accident that web search (e.g. Google or Yahoo) and academic search engines (e.g. Google Books and Google Scholar) are widely used to discover resources on the Internet as more books, journals or other research material are digitized and could be readily accessed online. The use of web search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo) is the most popular among researchers as 75,2% of them indicated using them very often or often (19%) (see Figure 13). Just 5,1% of respondents said that they seldom use them, while 0,7% don’t use them at all. Approximately one out of two (49,6%) researchers stated very often using academic search engines (e.g. Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search, etc.), while 27,7% report using them often (see Figure 13). Fewer respondents could be defined as occasional users (15,3%) or non-users (7,3%)
Online library catalogues are also very often or often used by the great majority of researchers (82,8%). Only 17,2% of researchers said that they seldom use them, and none of them indicated that they have never used an online library catalogue.
Digital archives, digital collections or data repositories are used frequently by researchers, though slightly to a lesser extent than online library catalogues. 37,7% of the respondents use digital archives very often and 32,3% often (see Figure 13). 23,3% of them stated that they seldom use digital archives, digital collections or data repositories and 6,8% indicated they never use them.
Very similarly, online journals (e.g. JSTOR, Emerald, Springer, etc.) are used indicating that 37,9% of scholars use them very often and 31,8% often (see Figure 13). 26,5% noted that they seldom access online journals and 3,8% stated never.
Finally, social media sites seem not to be used by 52,2% of the respondents to discover research assets. 35,1% stated that they seldom use them, while 8,2% use them often, and only 4,5% said that they use social media sites for research purposes very often (see Figure 13).
Another set of questions relevant to the discovery and collection of the research assets was oriented towards common scholarly activities performed during the research process, i.e.: a) visiting historical archives, special collections or museums; b) seeking information or advice from archivists, subject librarians or collection curators; and c) accessing primary sources outside one’s country of residence (see Figure 14). The frequency of performing these activities was measured as an important aspect for its prevalence.
16% of the respondents stated that they very often or often (26,5%) visit historical archives, special collections or museums, while 41,2% stated that they visit them seldomly (see Figure 14). 16,2% of researchers never visit museums or archives during their research. Besides, assistance from an archivist, librarian or collection curator is not considered crucial in the information seeking process as usually only one of three researchers requests it (see Figure 14). Half of researchers (51,9%) rarely seek information or advice from professional assistants, while 20,7% of scholars never need it.
National and international sources are equally important to Lithuanian scholars for the discovery and collection of their research assets. Almost half of them indicated that they access primary sources outside their country of residence very often (11,1%) or often (37,8%) (see Figure 14). 40,7% of the respondents said that they seldom access primary sources outside their country of residence, while 10,4% rely only on national sources of information.
Finally, for the creation of research assets, respondents named methods such as digital audio and video recording, photography, photogrammetry, 3D scanning and GPS based methods (see Table 1). The most common tools used in these activities are digital cameras, dictaphones, scanners, GPS receivers, etc. Respondents also indicated using computer-assisted web interviewing as an online research method for data collection.
There is a variety of online and offline computer programs that could be
used to organize, structure or manage research data. The most widespread
among Lithuanian digital humanists are offline tools, such as a word
processor (98,5%) or spreadsheet application (75,9%) (see Figure 15). MS Excel or MS Office programs are
among specifically named offline tools used for systematization of research
assets (see Table 2). The latter are the most
popular data management tools that have been increasingly used by Lithuanian
researchers for over a decade
The majority of the digital research community (73%) uses databases (see Figure 16) and almost one-third (27%) of it a database management system to organize, structure or manage research assets (see Figure 15). When using databases, researchers tend to choose personal databases (31,4%) over institutional databases (10,2%). However, using both personal and institutional databases is also a common practice, as one out of every three (31,4%) researchers indicated (see Figure 16).
A few more specific examples of software allowing management of digital resources in the database were named by respondents: Microsoft Access, WinBasp and ArcGIS (see Table 2). While MS Access is a very versatile software and can be applied in different areas, WinBasp and ArcGIS are software packages focused exclusively on archaeological research.
The researchers who indicated they use databases were also asked to state what kind of content is stored in their databases, among the following options: a) characteristics (attributes) of data or sources, b) textual descriptions or commentaries, c) photographs or scanned images, d) transcripts, e) maps, f) audio recordings, g) videos, and h) 3D models (see Figure 17). As indicated by survey results, research databases used by digitally-aware Lithuanian humanists most often contain textual descriptions or commentaries (86,6%), and characteristics or attributes of their data or sources (84,4%). They are also frequently used to store and manage photographs or scanned images (74,7%), as well as transcripts (69,6%). To a lesser extent, they are used to store maps (48,3%), audio (32,6%) or video recordings (32,6%). The least common kind of content in humanities research databases is 3D models (20,5%)
Additionally, researchers were also asked if they use keyword lists or
thesauri to organize research assets. Overall, researchers seem to use their
own keyword lists or thesauri to the same extent as standard ones, though a
personal keyword list is slightly more preferable for usage (see Figure 18). 41,2% of researchers are frequent
users of personal keywords and 35,4% use standard keyword lists or thesauri.
However, one of three researchers report that they seldom, or never use
standard or personal keyword lists or thesauri (see Figure 18). The latter fact relates to an indicated low level of
standardization and lack of strategic reglementation in national research
infrastructures dealing with scholarly data
Other less common applications for research data management include note-taking programs and web-based content management systems (see Figure 15). Only 15,3% of researchers tend to take notes digitally by using reference management software, such as Endnote or Zotero (see Table 2). Cloud storage systems, services and platforms were also mentioned as being used, but only 10,9% of digital humanists mentioned using web-based applications (see Figure 15). Wordpress software was mentioned as one of the examples of online content management (see Table 2).
Finally, it is important to note that not all work done by digital humanists entirely rely on digital technologies. 43,80% of respondents mentioned using some non-digital method to organize research assets (see Figure 15).
The survey data revealed little about scholarly practices concerning
annotation, enrichment and curation of the research assets. These activities
also represent a middle stage of the scholarly work lifecycle, which is the
least exposed to digital technology, as only half (56,90%) of researchers
reported using digital methods and tools in this stage (see Figure 11). Only a few mentioned examples
showcase scholarly activities, methods and tools used for these purposes
(see Table 3). The respondents state that they
use citation programs, such as EndNote and Zotero, to manage bibliographies
and references. Sometimes scholars also choose to manage their own citations
in order to measure research impact by using
However, using a note-taking application is not very common practice among Lithuanian digital humanists as only 15,30% of respondents indicated using it (see Figure 15 above). The same applies to using a bibliographic management application whereas it is very often used by 7,5% and often used by 9% of scholars. One of five respondents (19,5%) use it seldom and the majority of respondents (63,9%) never use such an application to manage citations (see Figure 19).
A wide range of activities and tools were identified by researchers when trying to describe digital practices linked with data processing, analysis and visualization. Mentioned examples mainly concentrated on data analysis where the choice for the particular digital method or tool depends on specific data that is relevant to respondents’ research field, e.g. for archaeological data analysis ArcGIS, ArcMap and WinBasp tools are used, linguistic analysis uses tools provided by AntConc and WordSmith software, and social network analysis is often implemented with Gephi software (see Table 4). On the other hand, many digital methods and tools are versatile and spread across different digital humanities disciplines. Such examples include qualitative, quantitative, comparative, computational, statistical, web analysis, etc. and a list of appropriate tools that allow to process data, e.g. MS Excel, MS Word, Loglet, Mathcad, HAMLET, MAXQDA, PSPP, SPSS, OriginLab, Google Analytics, etc. (see Table 4). Other activities to process research data include programming, transcribing, audio and video editing. Some of them also mention tools used for these purposes, e.g. online keyboard TypeIt for phonetic transcription or Adobe Premiere Pro and Videopad software – for video editing (see Table 4). The visualization of data, including drawing and 3D visualization, is another important activity mentioned by researchers. The most common image processing tools are Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW and AutoCAD (see Table 4).
With reference to the scholarly research cycle, 59,10% of digital humanists use digital methods and tools that enable research publication, dissemination or communication (see Figure 12 above). Mentioned examples of activities are lecturing, presenting, collaborative learning, online dissemination, blogging and social networking (see Table 5). Tools contributing to these activities include Microsoft Powerpoint used for lecturing or presenting and online tools, such as WordPress for blogging and social network sites, such as Facebook or Academia.edu, in supporting online communication and dissemination (see Table 5).
The dissemination of scholarly work could be done by using different means,
e.g. an institutional repository or portal, an open content journal, one’s
own website or blog and social media sites. A distinction between the latter
was made having in mind an existing diversity of social media sites where
dissemination is done through different ways or different kinds of content.
Also, not all social media tools could be used to the same extent.
Respectively a few options were suggested to respondents in order to avoid
overgeneralization of social media tools. Proposed options include scholarly
community sites (e. g. academia.edu, ResearchGate) (1), generic online
content communities (e. g. Slideshare, Flickr, Youtube) (2) and social
networks (e. g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+) (3). An important aspect of
collaboration in the digital humanities community is the shift over the last
two decades from a focus on the audience to participation that includes
scholars, students and the general public
However, even with an existence of a variety of options provided by digital technologies and Web 2.0 tools, researchers still prefer more traditional means to disseminate their research results. The survey revealed that the dissemination of scholarly work in Lithuania is mostly done through an open content journal or publication (see Figure 20). 30,1% of the respondents use it very often and 36,8% of them often. 23,5% of researchers indicated using it seldom, while 9,6% of them stated they never used such means of dissemination.
Using the portal or repository of their institution is the second most used mean of dissemination (see Figure 20). 12,5% of the Lithuanian researchers reported using it very often, while 34,4% use it often. On the other hand, the activity is seldom performed by 32,8% of the respondents and never performed by 20,3% of them.
The survey indicated that digital humanists in Lithuania are still not steady users of social media. Dissemination through a scholarly community site seems to be seldom amongst Lithuanian researchers in the humanities (see Figure 20). Scholarly community sites (e.g. academia.edu, ResearcGate, etc.) are the most popular type of social media used in research dissemination, followed by social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.). 11,6% of respondents are very frequent and 14% frequent users of online academic communities, while social networks are very frequently used by only 3,9% and frequently by 10,2% of researchers. One out of four (24%) researchers are occasional users of online scholarly communities and one out of five (19,7%) of social networks. However, the majority of researchers never use scholarly communities (50,4%) or social networks (66,1%) to promote research.
Blogs or personal websites are even less preferred in scholarly communication activities, while generic content communities are the least preferable mean of scholarly communication. Only 3,1% of respondents very often and 11% often use one’s web site or blog, while content communities are accessed very often only by 2,4% and often by 1,6% of researchers. 10,2% of researchers rarely use blog sites, while 15,1% seldom share content through generic online communities. The vast majority of scholars report never using one’s web site or blog (75,6%) or generic online content community (81%) to disseminate research work (see Figure 20).
Overall, the use of social media for dissemination purposes seems to be low
in the national digital humanities as researchers prefer more formal ways of
dissemination, such as journals or institutional portals. Social media usage
patterns demonstrate a slow shift towards participatory and more
collaborative scholarly communication, but do not indicate a breakthrough
point in the community. Usually researchers with adequate Web/Web 2.0 skills
have a greater variety of information practices, more choices for multi
communication, and more tools in social media
Additionally, related questions were asked to gain deeper insight about digital publishing, communication and dissemination practices carried out by Lithuanian digital humanists. Researchers were asked to indicate their publishing preferences regarding scholarly work. Publishing in their native language is the priority for Lithuanian researchers as it is done by the majority (79,5%) of them. English is the most preferred second language for publishing research work as 19% of scholars stated they primarily publish in English. Only 1% primarily publish in some other language (see Figure 21). The major preference for publishing in national language and relatively low proportions of other languages used in scholarly publishing suggest that international cooperation and collaboration between researchers in digital humanities is inadequate.
Collaboration is one of the most important aspects relevant to the current
state of digital humanities. It is known that traditional humanities still
obtains an image of the
Both Lithuanian and European respondents reported using digital methods or
tools to support all phases of the research lifecycle from discovery to
dissemination
The comparison of latter activity at European and national levels revealed
that European scholars generally are more keen to use innovative
dissemination tools, e.g. blogs, online communities and social networks,
(see Figure 24) which leads to overall greater
application of digital tools during the last stage of the research cycle
Another slight difference between national and European research communities
was observed during the middle stage of the research cycle encompassing
annotation, enrichment and curation practices
The use of digital methods and tools during other stages of the research
cycle is reported to be very similar in European and Lithuanian digital
humanities communities (see Figure 23 above)
Similar usage patterns for both communities are traced at the second
research stage concerning data organization, structuring and management
Finally, in order to better understand existing scholarly requirements for
digital research, respondents were asked to rate the importance of a series of
statements regarding their research needs on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is
the least important and 10 is the most important. The survey revealed that all
available statements of needs are relevant to Lithuanian digital humanists.
Nevertheless, improved findability or access to existing digital research
resources, having an average score of 9,2, seems to be the most important
requirement for the majority of scholars (see Figure
27). Additionally, respondents also noted that digitization of
research resources (av. sc. 8,6) and improved access to digital tools and
software (av. sc. 8,3) are important issues for them as well (see Figure 27). It seems that the digitization of
research data still remains one of the most essential requirements since 2003,
seeing that the absolute majority of archaeologists (93,3%) at that time
indicated the necessity to digitize research material
Another scholarly need listed among the key requirements is networking with
other researchers (av. sc. 8,3) (see Figure 27).
Networking or collaboration is one of the most important aspects of digital
humanities, which refers to iterative scholarship, mobilized
collaboration, and networks of research
Online advice and information on using digital methods and tools (av. sc. 7,2), as well as technical support on digital infrastructures, tools and software (av. sc. 7,1) are also considered relevant to Lithuanian digital humanists, though the importance is to a lesser extent (see Figure 27). These indications suggest that Lithuanian scholars consider technical support and online information to be adequate or they are quite confident in their abilities to apply digital methods or tools in their research.
The least important needs stated by digital researchers include courses or
workshops on digital humanities (av. sc. 6,6) and online support from a
professional assistant (e.g. archivist, librarian, curator, etc.) to find online
material (av. sc. 6,4) (see Figure 27). The latter
indication confirms that Lithuanian scholars highly depend on their personal
skills to navigate the complexities of digital humanities research and do not
consider help
The assessment of digital research needs does not show a significant difference between national and European digital humanities communities both underlying the importance of improving the access to existing digital research resources, which is the key concern altogether. Other important needs for both national and international communities include the continuity of digitizing current non-digital resources, ensuring better access to digital tools or software and fostering networking among scholars and research institutions in the field of digital humanities. Minor deviations between national and European level researchers could be traced when other needs (e.g. online information, technical or professional support, digital humanities courses and workshops) are considered. In comparison, they are valued with a lower score by European researchers and more appreciated by national scholars. It suggests that Lithuanian digital humanists, who in many cases are self-taught and driven by personal motivation, place more value on the opportunity of getting professional training, as well as receiving technical support and competent assistance.
The outcomes of the DARIAH survey on scholarly methods and tools suggest that the Lithuanian digital humanities community is in many ways similar to one established in Europe as they both show great similarities in research community composition, as well as in patterns of using digital methods and tools during the research process. There was no indication of any distinctive national phenomena that would significantly contradict the usual European research practice suggesting that in many ways Lithuanian digital humanities should be seen as an integral part of a global practice enabled by digital technologies that crosses disciplinary and geographical borders.
As seen from the national response sample, which composes 12,4% of all
Lithuanian scholars in the humanities, digital humanists vary in their abilities
to effectively apply digital methods and tools in scholarly work, and most
probably to understand particular aspects of digital research itself. Whereas
the majority of the community (58,4%) are considered to be advanced digital
humanists, who indicated using digital methods and tools on a regular basis, a
substantial proportion of scholars (30,7%) should be perceived as
digitally-enabled humanists, who tend to declare interest in digital methods and
tools instead of constant usage. Furthermore, despite the fact that nowadays
it’s hard to imagine research work being done without the help of a computer or
the Internet, 10,9% of Lithuanian scholars expressed a reluctant attitude
towards the use of digital technologies when the option of stating I neither
use, nor I am interested in using digital methods or tools
was left
open. While the reluctant approach may indicate main drawbacks associated with
digital technologies, it also may represent weak understanding and perception of
digital methods and tools, as well as of digital humanities. The latter group of
scholars represents a notable proportion of digitally-aware humanists, who admit
lacking knowledge about digital research and/or does not consider themselves to
be part of the digital humanities community, but judging by their responses to
other questions these researchers actually use digital methods and tools in
their work, though to a lesser extent. The issue of perceiving one’s identity as
a digital humanist is part of broader discussion focusing on existing
complexities related to the definition of digital humanities, which brings down
the typology and broadly conceived landscape of digital scholarship
The use of digital media in scholarly research is widespread in national, as well as European research communities. While a desktop or laptop PC is the primary mean to consult all types of research material, mobile devices show a high potential to become an alternative medium in the future, especially for visual and interactive research data (e.g. video, images, maps, audio). On the other hand, non-digital material and analogue devices still play and important role in scholarly research as it is a common practice to use digital devices in parallel with non-digital, especially in case of viewing books and archival records. Generally, this tendency is relatively more explicit among European digital humanists, whereas Lithuanian scholars reported being far less likely to use non-digital devices, which means that there is a significant amount of digitized or born-digital research data available to the national research community.
Digital methods and tools are used by scholars throughout the whole research
cycle that starts with research data collection and ends with research results
dissemination. However, it seems that digital methods and tools serve better in
particular research cycle stages, which concern discovery, organization,
analysis and dissemination of research data. Accordingly, a great deal of tools
specifically named by researchers support the latter activities, which not only
reveals the most common competencies and skills developed by European digital
humanists, but also showcase a current situation of tools available on the
digital research market. The main drawback in this case is digital annotation,
enrichment and curation tools that serve the intermediate stage of the research
cycle, which opens a discussion on the potential of developing more efficient
tools enhancing the practice. In fact, as noted by the study on scholarly
annotation established Humanities Computing
(HC) areas of interest, do not seem always to connect with the actual
process of the research work being carried out by most humanists
It is important to note that the main difference between the European and
national scholarly communities occur in the last stage of the research cycle,
which concerns publishing, dissemination and communication of research results.
National digital humanists are less keen on using digital methods and tools, and
are still accustomed to long-established research dissemination practices.
Moreover, the use of social media for research purposes seems to be particularly
underestimated by Lithuanian scholars. Social media as an innovative
communication and dissemination tool has been increasingly employed by
individuals and business companies over the last decade, and the overall use of
social media by Lithuanian enterprises takes a median position among the
European Union countries
The DARIAH survey should be seen as the first attempt to gather comprehensive evidence-based results on the scholarly work done by Lithuanian digital humanists, and provided accurate and measurable data to keep abreast of scholarly needs and current state of the art. It also pointed out particular areas of concern that may require more thorough investigation, which could be done by carrying on multi-case studies or other types of qualitative research to gain a proper understanding of underlying reasons, attitudes and motivations concerning digital humanities research.