User Requirements Gathering for the Humanities

这三个研讨会统称为“用户需求收集的人文”的资助下，AHRC研究研讨会呼吁扩大认识的要求捕获的人文电子研究项目，并创建一个社区，通过它的“最佳实践指南”可能被编译和推广。这一举措是联合监委会资助的牛津方案“为人文学科建立虚拟研究环境”的自然结果。确定和分析用户需求从一开始就对该方案至关重要，这不仅是因为该方案是根据2004/2005年在牛津大学进行的关于信通技术应用于人文科学研究的调查制定的。这项调查突出表明，特定学科领域的研究人员习惯于确定他们希望在其研究“产品”中取得的成果，并开发或寻找针对他们的技术，而信通技术则倾向于开发智能工具和应用程序，并将其提供给人文科学研究界，但往往没有真实的意识到研究人员想要什么或准备好了什么以及能够使用什么。这一系列研讨会的主要目的是分析和阐明如何跨越这一鸿沟。这些研讨会非常成功地强调了在人文社会中收集电子研究需求的重要性，并吸引了来自人文、电子科学和电子社会科学的广泛与会者。聚集这样一群不同的人在一起，使人文社会了解的方法，要求捕获eScience，然后决定作为一个社区的方法是最适合的需求和人文的研究目标。Marina Jirotka博士在第二次研讨会上的演讲和讨论特别成功地确定了哪些eScience方法可能适用于人文学科，哪些方法可能由于文化和工作实践的差异而不太适用。研讨会建立了一条路线，通过该路线，人文学科中的用户需求和正在进行的用户测试的最佳实践可以传播到更广泛的人文社区。“最佳做法”文件将通过维基提供，维基的格式和功能将由社区决定，社区实际上是通过本报告末尾提到的研究人员参加讲习班并对讲习班感兴趣而创建的。

The three workshops collectively titled 'User Requirements Gathering for the Humanities' were funded under the AHRC Research Workshops call to broaden awareness of requirements capture for humanities eResearch projects and to create a community through which a 'Guide to Best Practice' might be compiled and promoted. This initiative was a natural outcome of the Oxford-based programme, funded by JISC, "Building a Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities". The identification and analysis of user requirements had been central to this programme from its inception, not least because it developed from a survey of ICT applications in humanities research at Oxford, undertaken in 2004/5. This survey had highlighted the fact that researchers in particular subject areas were used to defining the outcomes they wanted to achieve in their research 'product' and developing or looking for technologies specific to them, while ICT tended to develop smart tools and applications and offer them to the humanities research community, often without a real awareness of what the researchers wanted or were prepared and able to use. The main aim of this series of workshops was to analyse and articulate ways in which that gulf could be crossed.The workshops have been extremely successful in emphasizing the importance of requirements gathering for eResearch within the humanities community and have attracted a broad cross-section of attendees from across the humanities, eScience and eSocial Science. Gathering such a diverse group of people together enabled the humanities community to learn about methods of requirements capture in eScience and then decides as a community which methods were most suited to the needs and the research objectives of the humanities. The presentation and discussion led by Dr Marina Jirotka at the second workshop, was particularly successful in determining which eScience methods might be applicable to the humanities and which might translate less well due to differences in culture and work practices.The workshops have established a route through which best practice for user requirements and on-going user testing within the humanities can be disseminated to the wider humanities community. The 'Best Practice' document will be made available through a wiki, the format and functionality of which will be decided by the community which has in effect been created through attendance and interest in the workshops on the part of the individual researchers named at the end of this report.