Humanities scholars can today engage in research inquiry using data from a range of varied collections which are often characterised by poor subject access, often resulting in systems that underperform and even effectively prevent access to data, information and knowledge. In spite of the availability of professional standards and guidelines to provide quality-controlled subject access through knowledge organisation systems (KOS), subject access in such collections is rarely based on KOS. At the same time, KOS themselves may come with problems such as being slow to update, being rigidly structured and not incorporating end-users’ vocabulary. It may therefore be useful to consider methods for remediating these deficiencies in KOSs, such as collecting user-generated metadata via social tagging or complementing automated indexing techniques with manual ones. To help address the above problems, the paper discusses these challenges and points to possible solutions in different contexts. It does so by reflecting on an open educational resource (OER) devoted to this theme, titled Introduction to Knowledge Organisation Systems for Digital Humanities. It was developed as part of an EU project called DiMPAH (Digital Methods Platform for the Arts and Humanities), 2021–2023, creating seven OERs for inclusion in DARIAH Teach.

Information and Knowledge Organisation in Digital Humanities: Global Perspectives (DCMI), explores the potential uses of, and challenges involved in, applying the organisation of information and knowledge in the various areas of Digital Humanities. By focussing on how information is described, represented, and organised in both research and practice, this work furthers the transdisciplinary nature of digital humanities. Most importantly, perhaps, the book provides a starting point for discussions about the impact of information and knowledge organisation and related tools on the methodologies used in the Digital Humanities field. The book is by and large an international volume, as its 41 authors are affiliated with universities and related organisations in 16 countries on 4 continents. Since several chapters are authored by practitioners, with real world examples, practitioners will also appreciate the relevance of this work, as well as offer inspirations for new projects and initiatives.

Prof. Golub and Dr. Liu will briefly provide an overview of the book and reflections on its goals and production. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

The digital humanities (DH) is an emerging field of teaching and research that invites modern technologies to address traditional humanities questions while simultaneously making space for humanistic critiques of those technologies. A natural relationship exists between DH and the field of information studies (the iField), particularly surrounding their common focus on the interface between humans and computers, as well as subfields such as the organization of information, libraries and archives, data preservation, and information in society. Thus, we propose that iField programs in universities should take an active role in DH education. We are particularly interested in programs that are officially Information Schools (iSchools), members of the international iSchools Organization. Our research began as part of a DH curriculum committee convened by the iSchools Organization. To support iSchool engagement in DH education, we have inventoried and analyzed the degrees and supplemental credentials offered by DH education programs throughout the world. Our study deployed multiple data collection methods, which included conducting both ad hoc and comprehensive website surveys, querying an online DH catalog, and inviting members of the iSchools Organization to participate in an online questionnaire. This work has revealed several common patterns for the current structure of DH programs, including the various types of degrees or supplemental credentials offered. We observe that iSchools have a significant opportunity to become more engaged in DH education and we suggest several possible approaches based on our research.

The interdisciplinary field known as digital humanities (DH) is represented in various forms in the teaching and research practiced in iSchools. Building on the work of an iSchools organization committee charged with exploring digital humanities curricula, we present findings from a series of related studies exploring aspects of DH teaching, education, and research in iSchools, often in collaboration with other units and disciplines. Through a survey of iSchool programs and an online DH course registry, we investigate the various education models for DH training found in iSchools, followed by a detailed look at DH courses and curricula, explored through analysis of course syllabi and course descriptions. We take a brief look at collaborative disciplines with which iSchools cooperate on DH research projects or in offering DH education. Next, we explore DH careers through an analysis of relevant job advertisements. Finally, we offer some observations about the management and administrative challenges and opportunities related to offering a new iSchool DH program. Our results provide a snapshot of the current state of digital humanities in iSchools which may usefully inform the design and evolution of new DH programs, degrees, and related initiatives.

The Digital Humanities Master’s Programme at Linnaeus University started enrolling students in the autumn of 2020. It is implemented as a collaboration between two faculties, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and Faculty of Technology. The two-year programme is structured to allow a general one-year introduction to the field and in the second year the students choose their specialization. One-year programme is also available. The programme relies heavily on invited talks and collaboration with external sectors for theses. topics and research-based teaching. The talk will report on the structure and challenges of running such an interdisciplinary programme across departments and delivering it to a highly heterogeneous student group. 

Digital Methods Platform for Arts and Humanities (DiMPAH) is a three-year Erasmus+ project started in 2020 with six partner universities from Cyprus, Demark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. The project has three objectives. The first one is to create novel OERs on digital methods and associated tools for the construction of new knowledge on A&H research questions and for audience engagement in a suite of coursesacross the complementary areas of qualitative and quantitative digital research tools and methods and providing access to A&H resources for i) information access through knowledge organization systems, and ii) user engagement via Augmented Reality (AR) of cultural heritage. The OERs will be accompanied by an interactive book to ease the introduction of teachers, trainers, and learners into the digital methods, across disciplines. The DiMPAH suite, channeled by the #dariahTeach platform, will be openly available across European institutions to support current and future professionals from cultural heritage sectors as well as academia in improving competencies, connecting best practices and applying spearheading technologies, to enable collective efforts towards future solutions. The second objective is to apply and test the DiMPAH methods via case studies in three prominent European digital heritage contexts: a) digitised newspaper collections; b) built heritage environments and their digital twins; and, c) performing arts collections. Finally, the project aims to move ‘towards new stories for Europe’: the selected new methods and technologies, and cultural heritage case studies, will be deployed in learning scenarios to localise and show possible solutions and potential impact on social equity, transnational and cultural diversity, gender equality, good health and well-being.

Information and Knowledge Organisation explores the role of knowledge organisation in the digital humanities. By focusing on how information is described, represented and organised in both research and practice, this work furthers the transdisciplinary nature of digital humanities.

Including contributions from Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, the volume explores the potential uses of, and challenges involved in, applying the organisation of information and knowledge in the various areas of Digital Humanities. With a particular focus on the digital worlds of cultural heritage collections, the book also includes chapters that focus on machine learning, knowledge graphs, text analysis, text annotations and network analysis. Other topics covered include: semantic technologies, conceptual schemas and data augmentation, digital scholarly editing, metadata creation, browsing, visualisation and relevance ranking. Most importantly, perhaps, the book provides a starting point for discussions about the impact of information and knowledge organisation and related tools on the methodologies used in the Digital Humanities field.

Information and Knowledge Organisation is intended for use by researchers, students and professionals interested in the role information and knowledge organisation plays in the Digital Humanities. It will be essential reading for those working in library and information science, computer science and across the humanities.

Purpose: The study aims to paint a representative picture of the current state of search interfaces of Swedish online museum collections, focussing on search functionalities with particular reference to subject searching, as well as the use of controlled vocabularies, with the purpose of identifying which improvements of the search interfaces are needed to ensure high-quality information retrieval for the end user.

Design/methodology/approach: In the first step, a set of 21 search interface criteria was identified, based on related research and current standards in the domain of cultural heritage knowledge organization. Secondly, a complete set of Swedish museums that provide online access to their collections was identified, comprising nine cross-search services and 91 individual museums' websites. These 100 websites were each evaluated against the 21 criteria, between 1 July and 31 August 2020.

Findings: Although many standards and guidelines are in place to ensure quality-controlled subject indexing, which in turn support information retrieval of relevant resources (as individual or full search results), the study shows that they are not broadly implemented, resulting in information retrieval failures for the end user. The study also demonstrates a strong need for the implementation of controlled vocabularies in these museums.

Originality/value: This study is a rare piece of research which examines subject searching in online museums; the 21 search criteria and their use in the analysis of the complete set of online collections of a country represents a considerable and unique contribution to the fields of knowledge organization and information retrieval of cultural heritage. Its particular value lies in showing how the needs of end users, many of which are documented and reflected in international standards and guidelines, should be taken into account in designing search tools for these museums; especially so in subject searching, which is the most complex and yet the most common type of search. Much effort has been invested into digitizing cultural heritage collections, but access to them is hindered by poor search functionality. This study identifies which are the most important aspects to improve.

This work focuses on questions of knowledge organization related to literary fiction. How can LGBTQI fictional literature become more accessible to readers and scholars? The project Queerlit Metadata Development and Searchability for LGBTQI Literary Heritage addresses this question in two ways: by the development of a thesaurus for the description of Swedish LGBTQI literature, and by building a curated bibliographical database for this material with flexible search options. Despite the community and scholarly interest in LGBTQI literature, relevant LGBTQI literature is hard to find both for readers and researchers. Subject indexing is underdeveloped for this topic, and subject headings have been historically inadequate and offensive. The paper focuses on how LGBTQI literature can be made more easily accessible through subject indexing. This will make new research possible, such as gaining overviews of the development of specific themes over time, the presence of LGBTQI literature within or outside of the literary canon or in different genres and changing ideas and perceptions concerning sexualities and gender identities. It will also accommodate user’s needs of better access to LGBTQI themed fictional literature.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the needs of potential end-users of a database dedicated to Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) literature (e.g. prose, poetry, drama, graphic novels/comics, and illustrated books), in order to inform the development of a database, search interface functionalities, and an LGBTQI thesaurus for fiction.

Design/methodology/approach: A web questionnaire was distributed in autumn 2021 to potential end-users. The questions covered people's reasons for reading LGBTQI fiction, ways of finding LGBTQI fiction, experience of searching for LGBTQI fiction, usual search elements applied, latest search for LGBTQI fiction, desired subjects to search for, and ideal search functionalities.

Findings: The 101 completed questionnaires showed that most respondents found relevant literature through social media or friends and that most obtained copies of literature from a library. Regarding desirable search functionalities, most respondents would like to see suggestions for related terms to support broader search results (i.e. higher recall). Many also wanted search support that would enable retrieving more specific results based on narrower terms when too many results are retrieved (i.e. higher precision). Over half would also appreciate the option to browse by hierarchically arranged subjects.

Originality/value: This study is the first to show how readers of LGBTQI fiction in Sweden search for and obtain relevant literature. The authors have identified end-user needs that can inform the development of a new database and a thesaurus dedicated to LGBTQI fiction.

While support for subject searching has been traditionally advocated for in library catalogues, notably since Cutter’s objectives for library catalogues, research shows that subject access in online library catalogues, repositories, and commercial services like bibliographic databases and discovery services has been less than optimal and fails to meet established objectives of bibliographic systems. Although the services try to match users’ expectations by implementing Google-like single search box interfaces, it seems that efficient mechanisms such as ranking algorithms used by Google, efficient exploitation of intellectual effort that has been invested into subject indexing, or even quality-controlled subject indexing per se, are still missing from these services, leading to retrieval failures. 

Specific problems in indexing humanities research have offered concerns for research over several decades. As part of the general development of digital scholarship, disciplines and research areas in the humanities have developed new structures both within themselves and in relation to other disciplines, both within and outside the humanities. In the currently growing interdisciplinary field of digital humanities, it is important to provide quality subject access to a vast variety of heterogeneous information objects in digital services. This includes both primary sources and secondary ones.

Recent studies of subject access in selected discovery systems, a university repository and Scopus will be used to demonstrate the raised issues, complemented by a qualitative study of researchers in the humanities and their ways of subject searching.

In the face of the ever-increasing document volume, libraries around the globe are more and more exploring (semi-) automated approaches to subject indexing. This helps sustain bibliographic objectives, enrich metadata, and establish more connections across documents from various collections, effectively leading to improved information retrieval and access. However, generally accepted automated approaches that are functional in operative systems are lacking. This article aims to provide an overview of basic principles used for automated subject indexing, major approaches in relation to their possible application in actual library systems, existing working examples, as well as related challenges calling for further research.

In this talk Koraljka Golub introduced basic principles of automating the process of subject classification and indexing, with a focus on text. Different approaches such as text categorization, document clustering and document classification were presented, compared for purposes of application, with most basic principles of automation introduced without going into advanced computational detail. Complexities of evaluation were also addressed.

The talk was largely based on the following open access encyclopedia article: Golub, Koraljka. 2019. "Automatic subject indexing of text". Knowledge Organization 46, no. 2: 104-121. Also available in ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization, eds. Birger Hjørland and Claudio Gnoli, http://www.isko.org/cyclo/automatic.

The class was delivered via Zoom and was attended by 88 participants from 33 countries. Presentation slides are available to all participants via the KO-ED forum on the ISKO UK website.

The chapter introduces the discipline of knowledge organisation (KO) and its relevance to scholars and practitioners in the field of digital humanities (DH). It sets the stage for the volume's 12 contributed chapters, which present case studies at the intersection of the two research areas. The contributions develop themes that highlight the specific opportunities and challenges of bringing these fields together. The themes of the chapters reflect the preeminent research topics of KO for DH: metadata in cultural heritage collections, which includes topics like conceptual models; data aggregation and metadata enrichment. Information management of textual collections, lexical resources and research outputs provide another important focus. Interfaces to cultural heritage collections and automated techniques are also addressed. Several chapters are directly driven by humanities research questions: one example is the ResearchSpace project, which demonstrates the ineffectiveness of data-based information organisation for historians. Another is the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and semantic annotation to explore a classical text. Finally, the chapter calls for transdisciplinary research collaborations that will bridge the gap within and at the intersections of KO and DH.

This paper is a case study of research publication practices at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Linnaeus University, a young, mid-sized university in the south-east of Sweden. Research output was measured from publications in the local institutional repository following the guidelines of local research policy as defined in university documentation. The data collection comprised 3,316 metadata records of publications self-registered by authors affiliated with the faculty during the period of 2010–2018. A statistical analysis of research output was conducted, focusing on preferred publication types, disciplinary specificity, level of co-authorship, and the language of the publication as registered in the local repository. The analysis focused on two main research questions: 1) how do the local research practices stand in relation to traditional publication patterns in the humanities? 2) how do the observed publication patterns relate to local university policy on publication and research evaluation? The empirical results suggest a limited correlation between publication practices and research incentives from university management, a finding that is corroborated by previous research on the scholarly character of the humanities and university policies. Overall, traditional humanities publication patterns were largely maintained throughout the period under investigation.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to provide modern local governments with potential use cases for their open data, in order to help inform related future policies and decision-making. The concrete context was that of the Växjö municipality located in southeastern Sweden.

The methodology was two-fold: 1) a survey of potential end users (n=151) from a local university; and, 2) analysis of survey results using a theoretical model regarding local strategies for implementing open government data.

Most datasets predicted to be useful were on: sustainability and environment; preschool and school; municipality and politics. The use context given is primarily research and development, informing policies and decision making; but also education, informing personal choices, informing citizens and creating services based on open data. Not the least, the need for educating target user groups on data literacy emerged. A tentative pattern comprising a technical perspective on open data and a social perspective on open government was identified.

In line with available funding, the nature of the study was exploratory and implemented as an anonymous web-based survey of employees and students at the local university. Further research involving (qualitative) surveys with all stakeholders would allow for creating a more complete picture of the matter.

The study determines potential use cases and use contexts for open government data, in order to help inform related future policies and decision-making.

Modern local governments, and especially in Sweden, are faced with a challenge of how to make their data open, how to learn about which types of data will be most relevant for their end users and what will be different societal purposes. The paper contributes to knowledge that modern local governments can resort to when it comes to attitudes of local citizens to open government data in the context of an open government data perspective.

Purpose

With more and more digital collections of various information resources becoming available, also increasing is the challenge of assigning subject index terms and classes from quality knowledge organization systems. While the ultimate purpose is to understand the value of automatically produced Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) classes for Swedish digital collections, the paper aims to evaluate the performance of six machine learning algorithms as well as a string-matching algorithm based on characteristics of DDC.

Design/methodology/approach

State-of-the-art machine learning algorithms require at least 1,000 training examples per class. The complete data set at the time of research involved 143,838 records which had to be reduced to top three hierarchical levels of DDC in order to provide sufficient training data (totaling 802 classes in the training and testing sample, out of 14,413 classes at all levels).

Findings

Evaluation shows that Support Vector Machine with linear kernel outperforms other machine learning algorithms as well as the string-matching algorithm on average; the string-matching algorithm outperforms machine learning for specific classes when characteristics of DDC are most suitable for the task. Word embeddings combined with different types of neural networks (simple linear network, standard neural network, 1D convolutional neural network, and recurrent neural network) produced worse results than Support Vector Machine, but reach close results, with the benefit of a smaller representation size. Impact of features in machine learning shows that using keywords or combining titles and keywords gives better results than using only titles as input. Stemming only marginally improves the results. Removed stop-words reduced accuracy in most cases, while removing less frequent words increased it marginally. The greatest impact is produced by the number of training examples: 81.90% accuracy on the training set is achieved when at least 1,000 records per class are available in the training set, and 66.13% when too few records (often less than 100 per class) on which to train are available—and these hold only for top 3 hierarchical levels (803 instead of 14,413 classes).

Research limitations

Having to reduce the number of hierarchical levels to top three levels of DDC because of the lack of training data for all classes, skews the results so that they work in experimental conditions but barely for end users in operational retrieval systems.

Practical implications

In conclusion, for operative information retrieval systems applying purely automatic DDC does not work, either using machine learning (because of the lack of training data for the large number of DDC classes) or using string-matching algorithm (because DDC characteristics perform well for automatic classification only in a small number of classes). Over time, more training examples may become available, and DDC may be enriched with synonyms in order to enhance accuracy of automatic classification which may also benefit information retrieval performance based on DDC. In order for quality information services to reach the objective of highest possible precision and recall, automatic classification should never be implemented on its own; instead, machine-aided indexing that combines the efficiency of automatic suggestions with quality of human decisions at the final stage should be the way for the future.

Originality/value

The study explored machine learning on a large classification system of over 14,000 classes which is used in operational information retrieval systems. Due to lack of sufficient training data across the entire set of classes, an approach complementing machine learning, that of string matching, was applied. This combination should be explored further since it provides the potential for real-life applications with large target classification systems.

The article offers a state-of-the-art overview of a number of Digital Humanities (DH) initiatives that have emerged in Sweden over the past decade. We identify two major developments that seem to be taking place within DH, with a specific focus on the infrastructural aspects of the development: (1) a strive to open up and broaden the research output and (2) multi-disciplinary collaboration and its effects. The two major components accentuate the new infrastructural patterns that are developing and the challenges these infer on universities. While current research is at large multi-disciplinary, developing infrastructures also enable the move towards post-disciplinarity, bringing the universities closer to the surrounding society. At five universities in Sweden, individual-sited infrastructures supporting DH research have been built today. They are complemented by national and international infrastructures, thus supporting developments and tackling some of the major challenges. In the article, the relations between individual disciplines, the question of multi- and post-disciplinarity, and the field of Digital Humanities are discussed, while stressing the factors necessary—sine qua non—for a fruitful development of the scholarly infrastructures.

Purpose – As the humanities develop in the realm of increasingly more pronounced digital scholarship, it isimportant to provide quality subject access to a vast range of heterogeneous information objects in digitalservices. The study aims to paint a representative picture of the current state of affairs of the use of subjectindex terms in humanities journal articles with particular reference to the well-established subject access needsof humanities researchers, with the purpose of identifying which improvements are needed in this context.

Design/methodology/approach – The comparison of subject metadata on a sample of 649 peer-reviewedjournal articles from across the humanities is conducted in a university repository, against Scopus, the formerreflecting local and national policies and the latter being the most comprehensive international abstract andcitation database of research output.

Findings – The study shows that established bibliographic objectives to ensure subject access for humanitiesjournal articles are not supported in either the world’s largest commercial abstract and citation databaseScopus or the local repository of a public university in Sweden. The indexing policies in the two services do notseem to address the needs of humanities scholars for highly granular subject index terms with appropriatefacets; no controlled vocabularies for any humanities discipline are used whatsoever.

Originality/value – In all, not much has changed since 1990s when indexing for the humanities was shown tolag behind the sciences. The community of researchers and information professionals, today working togetheron digital humanities projects, as well as interdisciplinary research teams, should demand that their subjectaccess needs be fulfilled, especially in commercial services like Scopus and discovery services.

Despite a growing number of digital LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, intersex) history archives, and research-driven digital LGBTQI initiatives, queer perspectives have not been prominent in the digital humanities. Furthermore, investigations of LGBTQI in literary history is hampered by the fact that, to date, there are no broad scholarly inventories of such literature. Due to the absence of exhaustive bibliographies, scholars need to perform time-consuming, human reading of individual works and imprecise searches in order to locate LGBTQI motifs and themes. Research on subject indexing has also revealed that controlled vocabularies in use are too general to describe LGBTQI themes, motifs, and characters in a relevant manner. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how LGBTQI literature can be made more searchable, and more visible through the development of a quality-controlled subject specific database (QUEERLIT database) in which specialized subject indexing is applied. Methodological challenges pertaining to indexing of queer literary texts with implicit LGBTQI motifs are discussed, as well as theoretical considerations raised when assigning certain contemporary subjects to historical texts.

Introduction. This exploratory study aims to map the premises of developing interoperability of archival holdings and the understanding of how “interoperability” is understood from an operational perspective at archival institutions. The study is based on a comparative survey of the views of archivists from Croatian, Finnish and Swedish archives on the perceived needs, barriers and preferences regarding online access and interoperability of their metadata and holdings.

Method. A web survey comprising 35 multiple-choice and open-ended questions focusing on current state and plans regarding online access and interoperability of the holdings and metadata of the institutions was sent out to archives in Croatia, Finland and Sweden in autumn 2015.

Analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out on the data, which related to 45 individual archives. Quantitative analysis employed the statistical package SPSS, while the qualitative analysis referred to content analysis of open questions by one of the researchers.

Results. While the respondents are unanimous in their opinion that interoperability is important for their institutions and useful for their users, the current level of interoperability and the online access to holdings provided by the responding institutions is in discrepancy with this opinion. The lack of resources and expertise could be traced back to the shortage of interest at strategic and managerial level.

Conclusion. The findings suggest that there are several obstacles in the way to providing improved interoperability and online access to archival holdings and metadata. At the same time, there is a lack of conceptual agency that would try to redefine the problem and try to choose appropriate methods, develop meanings and relations between the concept of interoperability and the principles of archival work.

The presentation builds on the NKOS 2018 presentation of automatically produced Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) classes for Swedish union catalogue (LIBRIS). Based on a dataset of 143,838 records, Support Vector Machine with linear kernel outperforms Multinomial Naïve Bayes algorithm. Impact of features shows that using keywords or combining titles and keywords gives better results than using only titles as input. Stemming only marginally improves the results. Removed stop-words reduced accuracy in most cases, while removing less frequent words increased it marginally. Word embeddings combined with different types of neural networks (Simple linear network, Standard neural network, 1D convolutional neural network, Recurrent neural network) produced worse results than Naïve Bayes /Support Vector Machine, but reach close results. The greatest impact is produced by the number of training examples: 81.37% accuracy on the training set is achieved when at least 1,000 records per class are available, and 66.13% when few records on which to train are available.