Excellent. Apply digital humanities tools to the task—I’m game.

Kathy

 

 

Kathy’s comments are really worth underscoring—perhaps more optimistically than presented.  I’m in the process of launching an analysis of visual resources/arts materials usage at Duke using both conventional and non-conventional statistics in a big-data project.  This like project causes me to reflect.

 

Humanities usage is so different than the natural science disciplines—the ones for whom stats-driven assessment tools are principally designed (and the disciplines from which many of our administrators are drawn).  One major factor is the length of usefulness of our print and e-materials:  sources more than five years old are generally useless for the sciences and for the humanities they’re just becoming incorporated in the literature.  Second, much citation literature is lexically driven.  “Words in, words out.”  It’s harder to trace image use (or a performance piece or architectural model—both of which might be variously titled).  Third, publishing venues, like an exhibition catalog essay, have no equivalent in the science model and frequently don’t get noted in impact tools.

 

Most of this is known to this readership.  What we shouldn’t do is throw up our hands.  Open-source and big-data software is allowing the complicated tools—previously the jurisdiction of the hard scientist—into the hands of the humanities manager too.  Kudos to Kathy for bringing our profound difference up.  Let’s bring the ‘difference engine’ into the rail yard along with the big freight engines, too.

 

 

Lee Sorensen

Lilly Library

Duke University

 

 

Neither Scopus nor JCR are of much use on this, I’m afraid, because both pay little heed to the arts & humanities. Scopus is a bit more inclusive but not enough to carry the question.

In an informed universe, those who publish in the arts & humanities should not be subjected to the same “quality assessment” gauges & increments as scientists & social scientists, and it’s up to departments and department chairs to fight that good fight with their university administrations.  And university administrations with their accrediting organizations…I know, I know, not gonna happen.

But this is an old song…in the end, the response will more likely be that arts & humanities devise their own JCR/Scopus-comparable “difference engine,” soon but not today.

 

Kathy Edwards

Research & Collection Development Librarian

Emery A. Gunnin Architecture Library

Clemson University

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(864) 656-4289

 

 

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