Measuring digital humanities learning requirements in Spanish & English-speaking practitioner communities

Crymble, Adam; Im, Charlotte M. H.

Abstract

Technology is global, but our use of it is subtly local. Digital scholarship in the humanities is no different. Where one is doing digital scholarship affects the types of methods and tools one will find most fruitful for humanities research. This paper considers global variations in digital humanities tool demand, by comparing broad patterns in digital skill-seeking through Programming Historian tutorial web traffic data. Programming Historian is a multilingual open learning resource publishing digital humanities tutorials in four languages. Its tutorials have played an important role for scholars seeking to learn about new tools and skills in digital humanities. Drawing on a unique dataset of 3.7 million visitors to Programming Historian between May 2019 and May 2022, this paper looks for patterns of regional use to identify skills most and least in demand in certain parts of the world. It does so through a pair of case studies that look at the top three national sources of anonymised web traffic to the English-language publication (United States, India, United Kingdom) and Spanish-language publication (Spain, Mexico, Colombia). The resultant conclusions identify key differences in skill-seeking both across the language divide (English / Spanish) and in different countries, some of which can be explained by cultural, economic, and bureaucratic factors. The paper concludes that while the specific variations of need will evolve, they will continue to exist, and digital humanities educators should adopt practices that acknowledge those differences and make space for local experts to define and best serve those needs.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 24, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Sep 4, 2023
• Publication Date: Nov 30, 2023
• Deposit Date: Mar 3, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 4, 2025
• Journal: International Journal of Digital Humanities
• Print ISSN: 2524-7840
• Electronic ISSN: 2524-7840
• Publisher: Springer Nature [academic journals on nature.com]
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 2-3
• Pages: 253-282
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-023-00066-x
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/13884715
• Additional Information: Received: 23 November 2022; Accepted: 24 July 2023; First Online: 4 September 2023; : ; : Ethical approval was granted by the UCL Research Ethics Committee, ID: 18893.002. The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the UCL Faculty of Arts and Humanities and give thanks to Programming Historian for providing the data underlying this study. Thank you also to Simon Mahony and colleagues at the Digital History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London, where an early version of this work received valuable feedback, and to Víctor Gayol, Lucia Michielin, and Daniel Alves, who shared their local DH teaching approaches at the UCLDH Roundtable “’Where’ affects ‘How’ we teach” (virtual, 8 September 2022).; : Adam Crymble has a non-financial interest in Programming Historian as the former chair of ProgHist Ltd, the charity that publishes Programming Historian.Charlotte Im, none.