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Article
Publication date: 11 May 2022

Chih-Ming Chen, Tek-Soon Ling, Chung Chang, Chih-Fan Hsu and Chia-Pei Lim

Digital humanities research platform for biographies of Malaysia personalities (DHRP-BMP) was collaboratively developed by the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity in…

Abstract

Purpose

Digital humanities research platform for biographies of Malaysia personalities (DHRP-BMP) was collaboratively developed by the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity in Taiwan, the Federation of Heng Ann Association Malaysia, and the Malaysian Chinese Research Center of Universiti Malaya in this study. Using The Biographies of Malaysia Henghua Personalities as the main archival sources, DHRP-BMP adopted the Omeka S, which is a next-generation Web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online, as the basic development system of the platform, to develop the functions of close reading and distant reading both combined together as the foundation of its digital humanities tools.

Design/methodology/approach

The results of the first-stage development are introduced in this study, and a case study of qualitative analysis is provided to describe the research process by a humanist scholar who used DHRP-BMP to discover the character relationships and contexts hidden in The Biographies of Malaysia Henghua Personalities.

Findings

Close reading provided by DHRP-BMP was able to support humanities scholars on comprehending full text contents through a user-friendly reading interface while distant reading developed in DHRP-BMP could assist humanities scholars on interpreting texts from a rather macro perspective through text analysis, with the functions such as keyword search, geographic information and social networks analysis for humanities scholars to master on the character relationships and geographic distribution from personality biographies, thus accelerating their text interpretation efficiency and uncovering the hidden context.

Originality/value

At present, a digital humanities research platform with real-time characters’ relationships analysis tool that can automatically generate visualized character relationship graphs based on Chinese named entity recognition (CNER) and character relationship identification technologies to effectively assist humanities scholars in interpreting characters’ relationships for digital humanities research is still lacking so far. This study thus presents the DHRP-BMP that offers the key features that can automatically identify characters’ names and characters’ relationships from personality biographies and provide a user-friendly visualization interface of characters’ relationships for supporting digital humanities research, so that humanities scholars could more efficiently and accurately explore characters’ relationships from the analyzed texts to explore complicated characters’ relationships and find out useful research findings.

Article
Publication date: 29 April 2022

Chih-Ming Chen, Szu-Yu Ho and Chung Chang

This study aims to develop a hierarchical topic analysis tool (HTAT) based on hierarchical Latent Dirichelet allocation (hLDA) to support digital humanities research that is…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to develop a hierarchical topic analysis tool (HTAT) based on hierarchical Latent Dirichelet allocation (hLDA) to support digital humanities research that is associated with the need of topic exploration on the Digital Humanities Platform for Mr. Lo Chia-Lun’s Writings (DHP-LCLW). HTAT can assist humanities scholars on distant reading with analysis of hierarchical text topics, through classifying time-stamped texts into multiple historical eras, conducting hierarchical topic modeling (HTM) according to the texts from different eras and presenting through visualization. The comparative network diagram is another function provided to assist humanities scholars in comparing the difference in the topics they wish to explore and to track how the concept of a topic changes over time from a particular perspective. In addition, HTAT can also provide humanities scholars with the feature to view source texts, thus having high potential to be applied in promoting the effectiveness of topic exploration due to simultaneously integrating both the topic exploration functions of distant reading and close reading.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts a counterbalanced experimental design to examine whether there is significant differences in the effectiveness of topic inquiry, the number of relevant topics inquired and the time spent on them when research participants were alternately conducting text exploration using DHP-LCLW with HTAT or DHP-LCLW with Single-layer Topic Analysis Tool (SLTAT). A technology acceptance questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were also conducted to understand the research participants' perception and feelings toward using the two different tools to assist topic inquiry.

Findings

The experimental results show that DHP-LCLW with HTAT could better assist the research participants, in comparison with DHP-LCLW with SLTAT, to grasp the topic context of the texts from two particular perspectives assigned by this study within a short period. In addition, the results of the interviews revealed that DHP-LCLW with HTAT, in comparison with SLTAT, was able to provide a topic terms that better met research participnats' expectations and needs, and effectively guided them to the corresponding texts for close reading. In the analysis of technology acceptance and interview data, it can be found that the research participants have a high and positive tendency toward using DHP-LCLW with HTAT to assist topic inquiry.

Research limitations/implications

The Jieba Chinese word segmentation system was used in the Mr. Lo Chia-Lun’s Writings Database in this study, to perform word segmentation on Mr. Lo Chia-Lun’s writing texts for topic modeling based on hLDA. Since Jieba word segmentation system is a lexicon based word segmentation system, it cannot identify new words that have still not been collected in the lexicon well. In this case, the correctness of word segmentation on the target texts will affect the results of hLDA topic modeling, and the effectiveness of HTAT in assisting humanities scholars for topic inquiry.

Practical implications

An HTAT was developed to support digital humanities research in this study. With HTAT, DHP-LCLW provides hmanities scholars with topic clues from different hierarchical perspectives for textual exploration, and with temporal and comparative network diagrams to assist humanities scholars in tracking the evolution of the topics of specific perspectives over time, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the overall context of the texts.

Originality/value

In recent years, topic analysis technology that can automatically extract key topic information from a large amount of texts has been developed rapidly, but the topics generated from traditional topic analysis models like LDA (Latent Dirichelet allocation) make it difficult for users to understand the differences in the topics of texts with different hierarchical levels. Thus, this study proposes HTAT which uses hLDA to build a hierarchical topic tree with a tree-like structure without the need to define the number of topics in advance, enabling humanities scholars to quickly grasp the concept of textual topics and use different hierarchical perspectives for further textual exploration. At the same time, it also provides a combination function of temporal division and comparative network diagram to assist humanities scholars in exploring topics and their changes in different eras, which helps them discover more useful research clues or findings.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 75 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 September 2018

Casey Daniel Hoeve

Despite its growing popularity, there is a noticeable absence of references to the inclusion of genealogy and family history studies within the field of digital humanities. New…

Abstract

Purpose

Despite its growing popularity, there is a noticeable absence of references to the inclusion of genealogy and family history studies within the field of digital humanities. New forms of inclusiveness, particularly in production-coding and cultural analysis, closely align genealogy and family history with the core tenants practiced among humanities computing and digital humanities. This paper aims to prove that genealogy as family history should be formally recognized within this cohort, as it can serve as a valuable and innovative partner for advocacy and technological advancement of the field.

Design/methodology/approach

By examining the literature, genealogy will be defined according to its use in the digital humanities, as well as its use in family history studies. The core tenants of humanities computing and digital humanities will be identified and compared against the research methodology and technological tools used in genealogy and family history research. The comparison will determine how closely the fields align, and if genealogy defined as family history should be used, and included within the field of digital humanities.

Findings

The progression of genealogy and family history from production to cultural analysis corresponds with the transition of production and coding (influenced by humanities computing) to the inclusion of experimental cultural research adopted by the digital humanities. Genealogy’s use of technological tools, such as databases, text encoding, data-text mining, graphic information systems and DNA mapping, demonstrates the use of coding and production. Cultural analysis through demographic study, crowdsourcing and establishing cultural connections illustrates new methods of scholarship, and connects coding and cultural criticism, serving as a bridge between digital humanities and the humanities at large. As genealogy continues to create new partnerships of a collaborative nature, it can, and will, continue to contribute to new areas of study within the field. As these practices continue to converge with the digital humanities, genealogy should be recognized as a partner and member in the digital humanities cohort.

Originality/value

Despite its growing popularity, there is a noticeable absence of references to the inclusion of genealogy and family history studies within the field of the digital humanities. The term genealogy resonates differently within the digital humanities, primarily articulating the history of the field over the study and research of family lineage. This study seeks to demonstrate how genealogy and family history can fit within the digital humanities, providing a new perspective that has not yet been articulated in the scholarly literature.

Details

Digital Library Perspectives, vol. 34 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2059-5816

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 September 2015

Kellee Caton

Previous work has conceptually explored the value of the humanities for tourism education and has considered the pressures that likely serve as barriers to its greater inclusion…

Abstract

Previous work has conceptually explored the value of the humanities for tourism education and has considered the pressures that likely serve as barriers to its greater inclusion in curricula. This chapter moves the debate from the conceptual level to the ground, reporting the results of a survey of tourism educators with regard to the role of the humanities in the programs in which they teach. The study explores the prevalence of the humanities as primary and supporting course content at the undergraduate and graduate levels, sheds light on barriers faculty members identify for incorporating more humanities content into their curricula, and offers examples of creative ways some educators are currently engaging with such content.

Details

Tourism Education: Global Issues and Trends
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-997-3

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 January 2021

Chih-Ming Chen, Chung Chang and Yung-Ting Chen

Digital humanities aim to use a digital-based revolutionary new way to carry out enhanced forms of humanities research more effectively and efficiently. This study develops a…

Abstract

Purpose

Digital humanities aim to use a digital-based revolutionary new way to carry out enhanced forms of humanities research more effectively and efficiently. This study develops a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) that can semi-automatically assist digital humanists through human-computer interaction to more efficiently and accurately explore the character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts for useful research findings.

Design/methodology/approach

With a counterbalanced design, semi-structured in-depth interview, and lag sequential analysis, a total of 21 research subjects participated in an experiment to examine the system effectiveness and technology acceptance of adopting the ancient book digital humanities research platform with and without the CSNRMT to interpret the characters and character social network relationships.

Findings

The experimental results reveal that the experimental group with the CSNRMT support appears higher system effectiveness on the interpretation of characters and character social network relationships than the control group without the CSNRMT, but does not achieve a statistically significant difference. Encouragingly, the experimental group with the CSNRMT support presents remarkably higher technology acceptance than the control group without the CSNRMT. Furthermore, use behaviors analyzed by lag sequential analysis reveal that the CSNRMT could assist digital humanists in the interpretation of character social network relationships. The results of the interview present positive opinions on the integration of system interface, smoothness of operation, and external search function.

Research limitations/implications

Currently, the system effectiveness of exploring the character social network relationships from texts for useful research findings by using the CSNRMT developed in this study will be significantly affected by the accuracy of recognizing character names and character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts. The developed CSNRMT will be more practical when the offered information about character names and character social network relationships is more accurate and broad.

Practical implications

This study develops an ancient book digital humanities research platform with an emerging CSNRMT that provides an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface to semi-automatically support digital humanists to perform digital humanities research with the need of exploring character social network relationships.

Originality/value

At present, a real-time social network analysis tool to provide a friendly interaction interface and effectively assist digital humanists in the digital humanities research with character social networks analysis is still lacked. This study thus presents the CSNRMT that can semi-automatically identify character names from Chinese ancient texts and provide an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface for supporting digital humanities research so that digital humanists could more efficiently and accurately establish character social network relationships from the analyzed texts to explore complicated character social networks relationship and find out useful research findings.

Article
Publication date: 3 June 2019

Chih-Ming Chen and Chung Chang

With the rapid development of digital humanities, some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists. However…

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Abstract

Purpose

With the rapid development of digital humanities, some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists. However, most of them have still not provided a friendly digital reading environment and practicable social network analysis tool to support humanists on interpreting texts and exploring characters’ social network relationships. Moreover, the advancement of digitization technologies for the retrieval and use of Chinese ancient books is arising an unprecedented challenge and opportunity. For these reasons, this paper aims to present a Chinese ancient books digital humanities research platform (CABDHRP) to support historical China studies. In addition to providing digital archives, digital reading, basic search and advanced search functions for Chinese ancient books, this platform still provides two novel functions that can more effectively support digital humanities research, including an automatic text annotation system (ATAS) for interpreting texts and a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) for exploring characters’ social network relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopted DSpace, an open-source institutional repository system, to serve as a digital archives system for archiving scanned images, metadata, and full texts to develop the CABDHRP for supporting digital humanities (DH) research. Moreover, the ATAS developed in the CABDHRP used the Node.js framework to implement the system’s front- and back-end services, as well as application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by different databases, such as China Biographical Database (CBDB) and TGAZ, used to retrieve the useful linked data (LD) sources for interpreting ancient texts. Also, Neo4j which is an open-source graph database management system was used to implement the CSNRMT of the CABDHRP. Finally, JavaScript and jQuery were applied to develop a monitoring program embedded in the CABDHRP to record the use processes from humanists based on xAPI (experience API). To understand the research participants’ perception when interpreting the historical texts and characters’ social network relationships with the support of ATAS and CSNRMT, semi-structured interviews with 21 research participants were conducted.

Findings

An ATAS embedded in the reading interface of CABDHRP can collect resources from different databases through LD for automatically annotating ancient texts to support digital humanities research. It allows the humanists to refer to resources from diverse databases when interpreting ancient texts, as well as provides a friendly text annotation reader for humanists to interpret ancient text through reading. Additionally, the CSNRMT provided by the CABDHRP can semi-automatically identify characters’ names based on Chinese word segmentation technology and humanists’ support to confirm and analyze characters’ social network relationships from Chinese ancient books based on visualizing characters’ social networks as a knowledge graph. The CABDHRP not only can stimulate humanists to explore new viewpoints in a humanistic research, but also can promote the public to emerge the learning interest and awareness of Chinese ancient books.

Originality/value

This study proposed a novel CABDHRP that provides the advanced features, including the automatic word segmentation of Chinese text, automatic Chinese text annotation, semi-automatic character social network analysis and user behavior analysis, that are different from other existed digital humanities platforms. Currently, there is no this kind of digital humanities platform developed for humanists to support digital humanities research.

Details

The Electronic Library , vol. 37 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2018

Qing Wang

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a retrospective bibliometric analysis of documents about digital humanities, an emerging but interdisciplinary movement. It examines the…

2202

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a retrospective bibliometric analysis of documents about digital humanities, an emerging but interdisciplinary movement. It examines the distribution of research outputs and languages, identifies the active journals and institutions, dissects the network of categories and cited references, and interprets the hot research topics.

Design/methodology/approach

The source data are derived from the Web of Science (WoS) core collection. To reveal the holistic landscape of this field, VOSviewer and CiteSpace as popular visualization tools are employed to process the bibliographic data including author, category, reference, and keyword. Furthermore, the parameter design of the visualization tools follows the general procedures and methods for bibliometric analysis.

Findings

There is an obviously rapid growth in digital humanities research. English is still the leading academic language in this field. The most influential authors all come from or have scientific relationships with Europe and North America, and two leading countries of which are the UK and USA. Digital humanities is the result of a dynamic dialogue between humanistic exploration and digital means. This research field is closely associated with history, literary and cultural heritage, and information and library science.

Research limitations/implications

This analysis relies on the metadata information extracted from the WoS database; however, some valuable literatures in the field of digital humanities may not be retrieved from the database owing to the inherent challenge of topic search. This study is also restricted by the scope of publications, the limitation regarding the source of data is that WoS database may have underrepresented publications in this domain.

Originality/value

The output of this paper could be a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners interesting in the knowledge domain of digital humanities. Moreover, the conclusions of this retrospective analysis can be deemed as the comparable foundation for future study.

Article
Publication date: 15 August 2017

Tania Yordanova Todorova, Serap Kurbanoglu, Joumana Boustany, Güleda Dogan, Laura Saunders, Aleksandra Horvat, Ana Lúcia Terra, Ane Landøy, Angela Repanovici, Chris Morrison, Egbert J. Sanchez Vanderkast, Jane Secker, Jurgita Rudzioniene, Terttu Kortelainen and Tibor Koltay

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a multinational survey on copyright literacy of specialists from libraries and other cultural institutions.

1507

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a multinational survey on copyright literacy of specialists from libraries and other cultural institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on a multinational survey of copyright literacy competencies of Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals and those who work in the cultural heritage sector (archives and museums), conducted in 13 countries, namely Bulgaria (BG), Croatia (CR), Finland (FI), France (FR), Hungary (HU), Lithuania (LT), Mexico (MX), Norway (NO), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Turkey (TR), UK and USA in the period July 2013-March 2015. An online survey instrument was developed in order to collect data from professionals regarding their familiarity with, knowledge and awareness of, and opinions on copyright-related issues.

Findings

Findings of this study highlight gaps in existing knowledge of copyright, and information about the level of copyright literacy of LIS and cultural sector professionals. Also attitudes toward copyright learning content in academic education and continuing professional development training programs are investigated.

Originality/value

This study aimed to address a gap in the literature by encompassing specialists from the cultural institutions in an international comparative context. The paper offers guidance for further understanding of copyright in a wider framework of digital and information literacy; and for the implementation of copyright policy, and the establishment of copyright advisor positions in cultural institutions. The recommendations support a revision of academic and continuing education programs learning curriculum and methods.

Details

Library Management, vol. 38 no. 6/7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-5124

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Ideators
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-830-2

Article
Publication date: 28 February 2019

Patrick Lo, Holly H.Y. Chan, Angel W.M. Tang, Dickson K.W. Chiu, Allan Cho, Eric W.K. See-To, Kevin K.W. Ho, Minying He, Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the emergent 3D interactive media technologies are used as a viable tool for enhancing visitors’ overall experiences at an exhibition…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the emergent 3D interactive media technologies are used as a viable tool for enhancing visitors’ overall experiences at an exhibition entitled, 300 Years of Hakka Kungfu – Digital Vision of Its Legacy and Future (Hakka Kungfu Exhibition) – presented and co-organized by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of Hong Kong, International Guoshu Association and the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire survey in both online and paper-based formats was used for identifying visitors’ experiences in the interactions with the multimedia technologies. For this research study, a questionnaire, consisting of 26 items, was set out to measure the visitors’ experiences at the Exhibition. Since the Exhibition was about presenting a centuries-old Chinese cultural heritage, Hakka Kungfu via the use multimedia technologies, in the context of establishing a dialogue between the past and present, the researchers included questionnaire items that were devoted to enquire about the level of understanding, knowledge and enjoyment, and visitors’ new knowledge about Hong Kong history and culture was successfully disseminated to the respondents at the end of the questionnaire.

Findings

A total of 209 completed questionnaires were collected at this Hakka Kungfu Exhibition. The findings reveal that the exhibits did attract people at all ages. This Exhibition gave the visitors a sense of interest and wonder in the object and information presented in the Exhibition. Findings of this study also reveal that this Exhibition has successfully attracted a large number of female visitors, as well as visitors who have never taken any martial arts training. In addition, visitors’ Exhibition experience was found to be memorable, as well as enjoyable. Furthermore, visitors’ experience within the Exhibition suggested that it was entertaining, as well as educational. By creating a long-lasting impact on the minds of these Exhibition visitors about the connections between and relevance of traditional Chinese Kungfu, their collective cultural identity, as well as the contemporary society we live in. The Exhibition exemplified the successful integration of the presentation of Kungfu as a form of cultural heritage with engagement-creating technology, in which technology is unobtrusive but effective.

Originality/value

Although it is already a global trend for the museums to integrate multimedia technologies into their exhibitions, research on the situation and feedback of multimedia technology used in the museum exhibitions in Hong Kong is scarce as well as scattered. Findings of this study could help identify various factors involved in audience participation, thereby exploring the possibility of building a contact point/space for traditional Chinese Kungfu as an intangible cultural heritage, via the integration of the latest media technologies. In particular, the development of multimedia technologies has become increasingly important to museums, and museum professionals have been exploring how digital and communication technologies can be developed to offer visitors a more interactive, personalized museum experience. In general, despite the growing interest in deploying digital technology as interpretation devices in museums and galleries, there are relatively few studies that examine how visitors, both alone and with others, use new technologies when exploring the museum contents.

Details

Library Hi Tech, vol. 37 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0737-8831

Keywords

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