2013 Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School Workshop

Impact as a process: considering the reach of resources from the

start Eric T. Meyer & Kathryn Eccles

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Digital Humanities@Oxford Summer School8th July 2013

@etmeyer@KathrynEccles#tidsr#dhoxss

Slides at:

What is impact and why consider it?

What do we mean by impact?

• Reaching intended audience• Reaching new audiences• Attracting users• Attracting new usage• Enabling new research questions• Enabling new approaches to education

What’s the point?

Gather data for investors and stakeholders

Use your impact in future funding applications

Know that you’re reaching your audience

Be iterative and adapt

Develop and extend your resource

Ensure you’re a relevant part of the community

Where to begin? Identify your audience and key stakeholders

Set your goals. What types of impact do you envisage your resource having?

What steps are you taking to ensure these types of impact?

Identify connections

What resources do you see as successful in terms of audience and impact?

Do you see your resource as part of a network of connected resources?

Measuring usage and impact

What could you measure? Users

Types of use

Awareness

Citation practices

Marketing strategies

Embedding

Methods

Quantitative methods

Webometrics

Web Analytics

Log file analysis

Scientometrics / bibliometrics

Content Analysis

Qualitative methods

Interviews

Focus groups

User feedback

Referrer analysis

Content Analysis

New methodsData collection:

Social media

Twitter

Facebook

Podcasting

YouTube/Vimeo

Data management:

Visualisation

Digitisation and Impact

TIDSR: The first usage and impact study

JISC funded project

July 2008-April 2009

Looked at five specific JISC-funded resources

Designed to test the TIDSR methods and review them for the TIDSR toolkit

TIDSR case studies

Project 1 – Online Historical Population Reports (OHPR/Histpop)

Survey: Low Awareness

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

88%

63%

39%

63%69%

7%

27%

35%

28% 22%

3% 7%

18%

7% 7%2% 2%

7%1% 2%

Use it regularly or frequently

Use it on occasion

Have seen it, but don't use it

I haven't heard of it

Survey: High Importance to Users

HistPop BOPCRIS BL News BL SoundsMed Backfiles0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

71%

51% 49%

36%

61%

29%

35% 34%

40%

33%

79%

69%72%

60%

76%

96%

84%

90%86%

82%

Important to my research

Important to my teaching

Important to field

Would recommend

Log Files: Non UK Activity

Log File Analysis

Top Search Phrases: Histpop

Histpop: User Communities

Perception: Specific niche community Well known by target audience Transforming access and usage patterns

User surveys: Embedded in educational resources Enhanced access to primary sources▪ ‘Histpop made it possible to do a completely different project’

Continuing education, online resources, non-traditional learners

Project 2 – British Library 19th Century Newspapers

Citation Habits

HistPop

BOPCRIS

BL News

BL Sounds

Med Back-files

9%

36%

53%

38%

43%

55%

36%

38%

50%

48%

36%

21%

6%

13%

10%

0%

7%

2%

0%

0%

Original version Original + URL Online version Other

0%10%20%30%40%50%

46%

29%

35%

20%

43%

Have you ever published a piece based on your work in this collection?

If so, how did you cite the collection?

Blog Evidence

Project 3 – British Library Archival Sound Recordings

Interviews, Group Interviews, Focus Groups

Time intensive, but productive if you are careful about what you ask!

Different stakeholders: Project team: Positive view of the work

only Broader stakeholders: While the digital

project was good, it also introduced tensions in the broader setting of the library

New kinds of serendipity, wide range of users

News

Engagement officer

Project 4 – British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service (BOPCRIS): 18th Century Official Parliamentary Publications Portal 1688-1834

Project 5 – Wellcome Medical Journals: the backfiles project

Knowing the Users

Historians? (would be looking at older articles) Not typical PubMed users Search interface issues / limited search

Clinicians? (would be looking at newer articles) Not typically reading 100 year old articles

Other users? Paths of discovery?

New uses?

Majority of downloads targeted more recent material – opening up of new resources to clinicians

More thorough and comprehensive searches Historians reported more comprehensive

search results (quantitative results) Also reported increased browsing,

greater serendipity, due to time saved finding articles

7%

12%

16%

17%

31%

34%

45%

47%

51%

54%

58%

62%

71%

77%

83%

13%

11%

9%

30%

18%

29%

32%

38%

27%

24%

32%

36%

56%

50%

48%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Cornell Animal Sounds

Sciper

Histpop

Chronicling America

Fine Rolls

Wellcome Medical Journal Backfiles

Historical Directories

Internet Lib of Early Journals

BOPCRIS

Archival Sounds

Imperial War Museum

Old Bailey Online

British Periodicals

British Library Newspapers

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers

Non-UK Awareness

UK Awareness

Awareness of Resource by Country

How did you find this resource?

0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%

HistPopBOPCRISBL NewsBL SoundsMed Back-files

http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/

http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-balanced-value-impact-model.html

University of Oxford Podcasts

Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online

British History Online

Siobhan Davies RePlay

Quick impact If you don’t have a lot of time or resources:

Twitter

Use it for quick polls

Put out news and look at your impact

Bitly links will give you click through data

User data

Keep in touch with your users

Use them to ensure you’re meeting their needs

http://www.rin.ac.uk/humanities-case-studies

Bulger, M., Meyer, E.T., de la Flor, G., Terras, M., Wyatt, S., Jirotka, M., Eccles, K., Madsen, C.

The Case Studies

Browsing and Searching

Libraries

Journals

Peers

79%66%

Google

Google Scholar

59%

55%

62%

83%

48%

76%

95%

Visit the library

Browse library materials online

Search library materials online

Citation chaining

Browse printed journals

Browse online journals

Consult peers and experts

It’s a huge change. You can do things much more quickly, read much more widely, find connections…it’s very, very important. “

What might take you several months if not years of research, you could do in hours, days, a week. So I think that means that it makes the nature of your research different because it allows you quantitative information much more quickly, which then allows you to maybe think about how you might use that information differently, because you’ve got so much more time.

“

Eric T. [email protected]

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120

Kathryn [email protected]

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=138

Oxford e-Social Science Project

Project work funded by:

Possible discussion topics

• Discoverability • of what?• by whom?• by what means? (manual, automatic,

guided, etc.)• Citation habits and the link to impact• Community engagement• Engaging atypical communities• Enabling unexpected uses

• Having the resources to measure your resources

• Impact ‘agenda’ versus increasing one’s impact

2013 Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School Workshop

Education

Transcript of 2013 Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School Workshop