2. Today’s Talk
Background
Review of new functionalities
User Engagement Study
Forthcoming for Emblematica
Online
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
3. Emblematica Online I
Presented at 2011 SES meeting in Glasgow by
Timothy Cole and MJ Han
Provided a single access pointto the indexed
digitized emblem book collections of the HAB
Wolfenbüttel and University of Illinois
Concluded in 2012: ~ 700 digitized books from HAB
and Illinois collections, with a selection of cataloged
emblems
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu
4. Emblematica Online II
New phase funded by the National Endowment for
the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and
Reference Resource program
New contributions of digitized emblem books from
the Glasgow, Duke University, Utrecht, Getty
Institute
New functionalities added to relaunched portal
Gathering use cases and conducting user
engagement study to assess Emblematica
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
5. Research on Use of Digital
Resources in the Humanities
Dobreva et al., User Studies for Digital Library
Development
Toms and O’Brien, “Understanding the information and
communication technology needs of the e-humanist”
Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and
Humanities Project (LAIRAH)
Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources
(TIDSR)
Research Portals in the Arts and Humanities (REPAH)
11. User Assessment is Necessary
“While a greater reliance and dependency on digital
resources is inevitable, the quality of the data and their
organization and accessibility in service to teaching
and scholarship are major concerns.
“Without the guiding voice of scholars, the
tremendous effort now being devoted to digitizing our
cultural heritage could in fact impede, not facilitate,
future research.”
—Charles Henry, The Idea of Order: Transforming
Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
12. Scholars + Emblematica
“The thematic research collection has been recognized
as an important genre…. it will play an important role
in how research materials are reconfigured in the
digital environment, as libraries become more involved
in providing access to digital resources collected and
organized by scholars, who contribute important
expertise in selection, collocation, interpretation, and
integration of the sources they study.”
—Carole Palmer et al. (2010), “Beyond Size and
Search,” ASIST 2010
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
13. User Engagement Study
Two phases: Interviews and usability testing with
students and scholars
Methodology: Semi-structured interviews with
graduate students and scholars
Disciplines: English, art history, medieval studies,
musicology, book history
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
14. Goals of Study
Understand the research practices of humanities
scholars who draw upon emblem books for
research.
Understand behaviors of researchers working with
Emblematica Online and similar digital archives.
Gather input from researchers to assess the new
functionalities and services added to Emblematica
Online, and determine future functionalities that
could further enhance the portal.
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
15. Use
To look up specific emblems and
use as digital illustrations
To search for emblems on certain
topics and themes
Challenge: Navigating the search
interface and results
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
16. Teaching
Use in undergraduate and graduate courses
for:
Analyze an emblem in conjunction with
Milton’s emblematic poetry
Emblems as an Illustrative tool for artistic
styles and cultural mores of historical periods
A unit on emblems planned for an art history
graduate seminar
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
17. Research
Digitized emblem books enable access to
archives normally requiring expensive travel
around the world
A way to cultivate Latin language skills for
reading early modern texts
Very interdisciplinary material—could see
increase of emblem use in art, literary
studies, history, cultural studies etc.
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
18. Suggested Functionalities
Additional information about editions of the
volumes
Enable annotations
Improve interface to make the search boxes easier
to find
Make IconClass easier to use
Include information that provides historical context
for the work/emblem (useful for students)
19. Impact on Field
Expand the use of emblems in research
across multiple disciplines
Strong illustrative tool for teaching visual
culture and cultural attitudes in early modern
historical period
Increase the impact and prominence of
scholarship in emblem studies
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
20. To Come
Functionalities
Improved search speed
More emblem-level
metadata
More IconClass cataloging
Annotation Tool
Collection Building tool
User Study
Fall 2014: Analysis of
interview responses
Winter 2014: In-person
usability testing of revised
Emblematica Online portal
Full results of user study
will be reported to NEH
and in journal articles
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
21. To Remember
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
Fall / winter 2014 for launch of new portal
Contact me at green19@illinois.edu to share
your feedback and thoughts about using
Emblematica Online
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
22. Thank you!
Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
green19@illinois.edu
Twitter: @greenharr