User Requirements Gathering for the Humanities

这三个总标题为“为人文学科收集用户需求”的研讨会是在AHRC研究研讨会号召下资助的，目的是扩大对人文电子研究项目需求获取的认识，并创建一个社区，通过这个社区可以编制和推广“最佳实践指南”。这一倡议是总部设在牛津的计划的自然结果，该计划由JISC资助，名为“为人文学科建立一个虚拟研究环境”。确定和分析用户需求从一开始就是该方案的核心，尤其是因为它源于牛津大学2004/2005年进行的一项关于信息和通信技术在人文学科研究中的应用的调查。这项调查突出了这样一个事实，即研究人员在特定学科领域习惯于确定他们想要在其研究“产品”中取得的成果，并开发或寻找专门针对它们的技术，而信息和通信技术往往开发智能工具和应用程序并将其提供给人文学科研究界，而往往并不真正了解研究人员想要什么或准备和能够使用什么。这一系列讲习班的主要目的是分析和阐明跨越这一鸿沟的方式。讲习班非常成功地强调了在人文科学领域收集电子研究需求的重要性，并吸引了来自人文科学、电子科学和电子社会科学的广泛参与者。将这样一群不同的人聚集在一起，使人文社区能够了解eScience中需求捕获的方法，然后作为一个社区决定哪些方法最适合人文学科的需求和研究目标。Marina Jirotka博士在第二次研讨会上的介绍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，哪些由于文化和工作实践的差异而可能不太好地翻译。讲习班建立了一条途径，通过这种途径，可以向更广泛的人文科学社区传播关于用户要求和正在进行的用户测试的最佳做法。“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，而社区实际上是通过参加本报告末尾点名的研究人员个人的研讨会并对研讨会感兴趣而创建的。

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.