Introduction | Participate | General Survey Results | Bibliographic Analysis | Survey of Dickinson, Whitman and Uncle Tom's Cabin Scholars | Works Consulted | Contact Info

Introduction

At the Digital Textual Studies Symposium in October, 2006, Morris Eaves, one of the directors of the Blake Archive, posed an important question: Are humanities scholars actually using what Carole Palmer has called thematic digital research collections such as the Walt Whitman Archive, the Valley of the Shadow, and the Rossetti Archive? If so, how are they using these resources, and what impact are they having on humanities scholarship? What enhancements to digital archives would make scholars more productive and innovative?

We are investigating these questions by focusing on a particular community of scholars--those working in American literature and culture. Our study has three main components:

• * a survey of scholars in American literature, culture and history about how they use digital resources to support their research, as well as follow-up interviews with selected scholars
• * a bibliographic analysis to determine whether scholarly works on Whitman, Dickinson and Uncle Tom's Cabin published between 2000 and 2006 cite the Walt Whitman Archive (WWA), the Dickinson Electronic Archives (DEA), and Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (UTAC)
• * a survey of Whitman, Dickinson and Stowe scholars about why they did or did not cite the digital archives mentioned above, as well as follow-up interviews with selected scholars

We hope that our study will lead to a better understanding of research practices and improved support for humanities scholars. We are working on an article summarizing our findings; in the meantime, we are making available preliminary data.

For an overview of our research, see our presentation at the 2007 American Literature Association conference (May 26, 2007).

General Survey of American Studies Scholars

In April, 2007, we invited subscribers to two listservs in American literature and culture--H-AMSTUDY (which has 3639 subscribers) and H-USA (which has approximately 500 subscribers)--to take our survey about the impact of digital resources on humanities scholarship. To date, 85 people have responded. In addition, we did follow-up phone interviews with 7 survey participants to collect more details about their research practices and preferences.

• Preliminary survey results
• Summary of responses to the question "Do you think that the availability of electronic resources has transformed humanities scholarship? If so, how? If not, why not?"

Bibliographic Analysis

Method

To focus our study, we examined scholarship on Whitman, Dickinson and Uncle Tom's Cabin published between 2000 and 2006 to determine whether the Walt Whitman Archive (WWA), the Dickinson Electronic Archives (DEA), or Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (UTAC) were cited. So that we could identify the most pertinent sources, we looked at those cited in bibliographic essays on Whitman, Dickinson and Uncle Tom's Cabin published in American Literary Scholarship between 2000 and 2004 (the last issue available to us). For works published after 2004, we did a keyword search in the MLA Bibliography on Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Uncle Tom's Cabin and examined all references that were not dissertations or reviews. If the work was not available in Fondren Library and was too difficult to attain through Interlibrary Loan, we removed it from our bibliography.

Caveats

As our interviews with scholars have indicated, just because a digital archive was not cited does not mean that it was not consulted. For instance, some scholars may not trust that the web addresses of digital archives will persist in the long-term, or they may view print editions as having more scholarly credibility than electronic versions.

Citations of the Walt Whitman Archive

• 13% of works on Whitman (39 of 299) included in our initial bibliography (using the criteria described above) cite the WWA
• 14% (41 of 299) cite other web resources, such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Classroom Electric, American Memory, Making of America, etc
• We identified another 22 works not included in our initial bibliography that cited the Walt Whitman Archive, including works on digital humanities and rhetoric.
• List of works citing the Walt Whitman Archive (pdf)

Citations of the Dickinson Electronic Archives (DEA)

• 13% of works on Dickinson included in our initial bibliography (32 of 244) cite the DEA
• 9% (22 of 244) cite other web resources, such as UVA's Etext Center, the 1828 Webster's Dictionary, and the English Full-Text Poetry Database
• We identified another 41 works not included in our initial bibliography that cited the DEA, including works on digital humanities, poetry and internet resources.
• List of works citing the Dickinson Electronic Archives (pdf)

Citations of Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (UTAC)

• 0% of works on Uncle Tom's Cabin included in our initial bibliography (0 of 50) cite UTAC
• 12% (6 of 50) cite other web resources, such as Project Gutenberg and the Inter-American Literature and Criticism: An Electronic Annotated Bibliography
• We identified another 21 works not included in our initial bibliography that cited UTAC, including works on digital humanities and the Civil War, as well as works published in 2007.
• List of works citing the Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (pdf)

Survey of Scholars about Their Usage of Thematic Digital Research Collections

Following our bibliographic analysis of Whitman, Dickinson, and Stowe scholarship, in May of 2007 we invited authors included in the bibliographies to take a web-based survey about why they did or did note cite the digital archive in their work. Preliminary results are now available; complete analysis of the results will be available in November of 2007.

• Why scholars did not cite the Walt Whitman Archive
• Why scholars cited the Walt Whitman Archive
• Why scholars did not cite the Dickinson Electronic Archives
• Why scholars cited the Dickinson Electronic Archives
• Why scholars did not cite Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
• Why scholars cited Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture

Works Consulted

Contact Information

We welcome questions and comments. Please contact:

• Lisa Spiro, Director, Digital Media Center: lspiro@rice.edu | 713-348-2594
• Jane Segal, Humanities Librarian: segal@rice.edu