The Impacts of Digital Collections: Early English Books Online & House of Commons Parliamentary Papers

Abstract

Research design & methods Usage Statistics Usage statistics for both EEBO and HCPP were provided by ProQuest and Jisc for the period from 2004-2015. These data included results aggregated at the monthly level per UK institution that has a subscription to the collections. The statistics include numbers of web sessions, searches, 'hits', document views, PDFs access, full text views, searches and other data. Some of these data are inconsistent across the time period due to changes in access modes and policies, so we have relied most heavily in this report on the most consistent fields: [Document/Page Image Views] (ProQuest) and [Page Views] (Jisc) in EEBO and [Full Texts Accessed] in HCPP. These are slightly different in practice, but provide comparable data in terms of trends. The absolute numbers, however, cannot be directly compared for any of the variables available. The data were provided by ProQuest in Excel format, which were then imported into an Access database where they were cleaned and combined with publicly available data 6 from the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise in the UK, and geo-coded using data obtained from Google Maps. As institutional names were not consistent among the various sources, a table was used to link the different data sources. Additional data were provided by Jisc from the Historical Texts platform, dating from June 2014 until the end of 2015. These data were also in Excel format, and were imported into the same database and linked with the other data described above.

The Library in Digital Humanities

“…This approach has informed several studies that relate to digital resources and the digital humanities. The ones I draw attention to here either provide models for evaluating digital resources (Tanner, 2012), or undertake evaluation of specific resources (Hughes, Ell, Knight, & Dobreva, 2015;Meyer & Eccles, 2016;Warwick et al, 2008), and all adopt mixed methods approaches that include various forms of web log analysis, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, qualitative and quantitative surveys, and citation analysis. These studies constitute a large subset of work within the digital humanities and demonstrate that deep methodological engagement with the question of the user is a key characteristic of LIS work in the digital humanities.…”

Defending the digital: Awareness of digital selectivity in historical research practice

“…Typically, these participants hold positive views of their experience, which is why they are so willing to interact (Green et al, 2015). A recent Jisc-sponsored study recognized this limitation in its findings as it drew from users ‘selected for their experience with and creativity in using the resources’ (Meyer and Eccles, 2016: 33). The study acknowledged that ‘it is perhaps no surprise that the users interviewed here were overwhelmingly positive’ (p. 33).…”

Review of 'ProQuest UK Parliamentary Papers: House of Commons'

“…Even to use the search I think you've got to have a really good understanding of what actually a parliamentary paper is'. (6) Other features and future developments ProQuest provide an overview of forthcoming improvements to their user interface generally. (7) It is stated that enhancements 'will initially focus on making the document viewing [and] results display simpler [and] easier to use' and 'full text easier to navigate'.…”