Abstract
PurposeThe paper examines academic historians' information interactions with material from digital historical-newspaper collections as the research process unfolds.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed qualitative analysis from in-depth interviews with Finnish history scholars who use digitised historical newspapers as primary sources for their research. A model for task-based information interaction guided the collection and analysis of data.FindingsThe study revealed numerous information interactions within activities related to task-planning, the search process, selecting and working with the items and synthesis and reporting. The information interactions differ with the activities involved, which call for system support mechanisms specific to each activity type. Various activities feature information search, which is an essential research method for those using digital collections in the compilation and analysis of data. Furthermore, application of quantitative methods and multidisciplinary collaboration may be shaping culture in history research toward convergence with the research culture of the natural sciences.Originality/valueFor sustainable digital humanities infrastructure and digital collections, it is of great importance that system designers understand how the collections are accessed, why and their use in the real-world context. The study enriches understanding of the collections' utilisation and advances a theoretical framework for explicating task-based information interaction.
Highlights
If we are to design sustainable digital humanities infrastructure and digital collections, it is highly important to understand how and why these systems are accessed and used, in realworld context
As soon as it was launched, the digital newspaper collection quickly became a popular source of research data recognised for the new opportunities it offers for digital history research in Finland
Our research focused on what kinds of information interactions are involved in the activities related to using historical newspapers for primary research sources in research tasks
Summary
If we are to design sustainable digital humanities infrastructure and digital collections, it is highly important to understand how and why these systems are accessed and used, in realworld context. Some crucial aspects of work practices that shape the digital tools’ and platforms’ use could get ignored To address this issue, we conducted a qualitative research aimed at providing a user-centred picture of digitalised historical newspapers’ utilisation that covers all activities involved in the research process. With the digitisation of the materials have come concepts such as the digital historian, digital history (Crymble, 2021; Gregory, 2014) and computational history (Nanetti and Cheong, 2018).
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