What Makes A Good Digital Humanities

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Digital Humanities is often defined as 'the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities'. It combines aspects of computing and digitisation with traditional humanities subjects such as history, literature and politics. The development of this concept began in the 1940s, when research began to take the form of databases to store information (Kirschenbaum, 2010). Since then, developments in computing made it easier for the general public to access research material that may have previously been inaccessible. This essay will address the question of what makes a good digital humanities resource, under the following headings: presentation, content, features, usability and best practice implementation. The essay will review the …show more content…

It is important to maintain a high level of usability. According to conventions regarding digital collections, digital resources should be 'broadly available and avoid any unnecessary impediments to use' (NISO Framework Working Group, 2007). Most digital resources for historical documents don't usually require the use of any browser specific tags (Schreibman, S., Siemens, R. and Unsworth, J., 2004). For this reason it is fully expected that the website be totally functional in all web browsers. All of the website's key features were tested in chrome, firefox and internet explorer for desktop, as well as in chrome on android. The website was found to work in all browsers I used for testing. Therefore the website is usable from both desktop, mobile and tablet devices. All downloadable ebooks available on this website are available as .mobi files as well as EPUB files. Mobi is a file format for viewing ebooks on devices such as PDAs, smart phones and tablets. This makes the ebooks also accessible on all browser devices. It is also important for curators of the resource to keep up to date on new technologies and information mediums to ensure that their digital resource always remains relevant (Schreibman, S., Siemens, R. and Unsworth, J., 2004). Office of the Historian's homepage contains links to both its twitter and tumblr accounts, which shows latest posts about …show more content…

I found the search feature for this website to be particularly useful. Because Office of the Historian is such an expansive digital resource, it is important for the user to be able to easily refine their search to find exactly what they are looking for. As well as a search box, the user can use check boxes to narrow down the scope of the results. For example, checking the 'historical documents' box will narrow down your search to historical documents only. The search engine also allows the user to use boolean operators (“and” and “or”) to refine a search, and to use the wildcard characters '?' or '*' in place of a letter when you're not sure of the spelling. In addition, searching for two keywords will return documents that contain those two phrases anywhere in a document. To find only documents that contain specific, ordered combinations of two words, you can use quotation marks around your search term. For example, searching “nuclear weapon” will return documents that contain the phrase in that exact order and combination only (Randolph, 2015). The search features mentioned above make research a lot easier because the user can find exactly what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. This is an important aspect of any good digital resource, particularly for larger collections that contain a lot of documents and resources. Office of the Historian also offers tags divided into three

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