In this post, Sarah van Eyndhoven, Researcher in Residence, discusses the value of digital tools within arts and humanities and highlights the importance of digital skills development, emphasising the work we do at Digital Research Services.
You can contact Sarah at S.J.M.Van-Eyndhoven@sms.ed.ac.uk
In my last blog post, I wrote about the conference I was attending at Brussels, in which I hoped to highlight a valuable digital tool within the field of historical sociolinguistic research. This tool has so much potential to significantly cut down on the time it takes historians and linguists to digitise manuscript material. Being able to automate this part of the methodology frees researchers up to spend much more time investigating the linguistic patterns in the textual data, rather than getting caught up in the laborious, tedious process of digitising material in the first place. This touches upon the value of digital tools more generally; digitisation doesn’t exist for digitisation’s sake, rather, the vast world of different applications available to the researcher have all been developed with a similar aim in mind. Namely, to automate and enable a smoother progress through all parts of the research lifecycle.
The conference itself was a big success on the digital technologies front – even compared to the first time I attended one of their gatherings in 2019 - there was a much greater emphasis on various digital tools and techniques that are becoming available in the field of historical sociolinguistics. Traditionally, arts and humanities has remained somewhat wary of digital tools and methods of analysis, given that, unlike natural or hard sciences, they aren’t naturally associated with liberal arts research. And yet, slowly but surely, the field of digital humanities is growing, and scholars are recognising that these methods are not necessarily being employed at the cost of human insight or a true representation of the data. Rather, by using these methods holistically and utilising their quantitative power, whilst recognising their limitations, we can actually produce more encompassing, replicable and reproducible analysis. This in turn provides a far greater understanding of the phenomenon at play than anything possible within the limited abilities of a single researcher.
This theme resonated strongly in the conference, and my presentation contributed to the ongoing dialogue around the digital future of humanities. Having experienced first-hand the difficulties in identifying appropriate digital tools, and then learning how to use them, it was both an honour and a joy to be able to demonstrate this tool to other researchers and open up the greater possibilities it offers. Simply by being able to spread this valuable information, and make it less alien and unknown to fellow academics within my field, several people opened up to the idea of actually trying out this tool, and if successful, running this on a much larger dataset than they had initially anticipated.
This speaks to the other side of the coin when it comes to digital tools, and highlights a key goal we have here at DRS. Having techniques and software available is all very well, but if researchers sense the barrier to using and understanding these programmes is too high, then the natural instinct is to retreat to the familiar and the comfortable, even if that means resorting to traditional, manual and time-consuming techniques. A vital component to promoting digital services is not just visibility and awareness, but also providing adequate support and training to go along with them. The great thing about DRS is that its services don’t stop at a list of tools and web links. Instead, they provide training, seminars and workshops alongside programmes and applications, helping researchers get to grips with how they work and how to apply them to their own data.
As we continue to plan for the upcoming academic year, part of the focus will be on various skills-related events, and there are some exciting things in the works! A central tenet of Research Facilitation is ‘DRS for all’, but in order to do so, we recognise that access needs will differ across the research community, and one way to address those discrepancies is to ensure equal opportunities to learn and use the tools available. For every scholar comes with their own dataset, academic background, set of skills and level of familiarity with digital approaches, and no two people will be alike. Through valid training programmes, we can however achieve digital equity within the research community, no matter what level of expertise people bring to the table. Not only can researchers move their work forward, they also gain valuable skills and techniques that they can apply in the future, and even teach to others, just like I did two weeks ago. And by being able to make digital research less daunting and intimidating, we can open up greater possibilities across varying intellectual fields, allowing the research community to spend less time stuck in the data jungle, and more time exploring the vast sea of possibilities when it comes to results.