Presentation given at the 2014 Society for Emblem Studies meeting at the University of Kiel.

1. 2014 Society for Emblem Studies Meeting
August 1, 2014

2. Today’s Talk
 Background
 Review of new functionalities
 User Engagement Study
 Forthcoming for Emblematica
Online
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

3. Emblematica Online I
 Presented at 2011 SES meeting in Glasgow by
Timothy Cole and MJ Han
 Provided a single access pointto the indexed
digitized emblem book collections of the HAB
Wolfenbüttel and University of Illinois
 Concluded in 2012: ~ 700 digitized books from HAB
and Illinois collections, with a selection of cataloged
emblems
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu

4. Emblematica Online II
 New phase funded by the National Endowment for
the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and
Reference Resource program
 New contributions of digitized emblem books from
the Glasgow, Duke University, Utrecht, Getty
Institute
 New functionalities added to relaunched portal
 Gathering use cases and conducting user
engagement study to assess Emblematica
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

5. Research on Use of Digital
Resources in the Humanities
 Dobreva et al., User Studies for Digital Library
Development
 Toms and O’Brien, “Understanding the information and
communication technology needs of the e-humanist”
 Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and
Humanities Project (LAIRAH)
 Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources
(TIDSR)
 Research Portals in the Arts and Humanities (REPAH)

6. Enhanced Search Interface
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

7. New Tabbed Interface
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

8. Institutional Branding
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

9. Enhanced Metadata
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

10. IconClass Indexing
@greenharr
green19@illinois.edu

11. User Assessment is Necessary
“While a greater reliance and dependency on digital
resources is inevitable, the quality of the data and their
organization and accessibility in service to teaching
and scholarship are major concerns.
“Without the guiding voice of scholars, the
tremendous effort now being devoted to digitizing our
cultural heritage could in fact impede, not facilitate,
future research.”
—Charles Henry, The Idea of Order: Transforming
Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

12. Scholars + Emblematica
“The thematic research collection has been recognized
as an important genre…. it will play an important role
in how research materials are reconfigured in the
digital environment, as libraries become more involved
in providing access to digital resources collected and
organized by scholars, who contribute important
expertise in selection, collocation, interpretation, and
integration of the sources they study.”
—Carole Palmer et al. (2010), “Beyond Size and
Search,” ASIST 2010
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

13. User Engagement Study
 Two phases: Interviews and usability testing with
students and scholars
 Methodology: Semi-structured interviews with
graduate students and scholars
 Disciplines: English, art history, medieval studies,
musicology, book history
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

14. Goals of Study
 Understand the research practices of humanities
scholars who draw upon emblem books for
research.
 Understand behaviors of researchers working with
Emblematica Online and similar digital archives.
 Gather input from researchers to assess the new
functionalities and services added to Emblematica
Online, and determine future functionalities that
could further enhance the portal.
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

15. Use
 To look up specific emblems and
use as digital illustrations
 To search for emblems on certain
topics and themes
 Challenge: Navigating the search
interface and results
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

16. Teaching
Use in undergraduate and graduate courses
for:
 Analyze an emblem in conjunction with
Milton’s emblematic poetry
 Emblems as an Illustrative tool for artistic
styles and cultural mores of historical periods
 A unit on emblems planned for an art history
graduate seminar
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

17. Research
 Digitized emblem books enable access to
archives normally requiring expensive travel
around the world
 A way to cultivate Latin language skills for
reading early modern texts
 Very interdisciplinary material—could see
increase of emblem use in art, literary
studies, history, cultural studies etc.
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

18. Suggested Functionalities
 Additional information about editions of the
volumes
 Enable annotations
 Improve interface to make the search boxes easier
to find
 Make IconClass easier to use
 Include information that provides historical context
for the work/emblem (useful for students)

19. Impact on Field
 Expand the use of emblems in research
across multiple disciplines
 Strong illustrative tool for teaching visual
culture and cultural attitudes in early modern
historical period
 Increase the impact and prominence of
scholarship in emblem studies
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

20. To Come
Functionalities
 Improved search speed
 More emblem-level
metadata
 More IconClass cataloging
 Annotation Tool
 Collection Building tool
User Study
 Fall 2014: Analysis of
interview responses
 Winter 2014: In-person
usability testing of revised
Emblematica Online portal
 Full results of user study
will be reported to NEH
and in journal articles
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

21. To Remember
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
 Fall / winter 2014 for launch of new portal
 Contact me at green19@illinois.edu to share
your feedback and thoughts about using
Emblematica Online
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

22. Thank you!
Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
green19@illinois.edu
Twitter: @greenharr