wiberly.p65 Time and Technology 421 Time and Technology: A Decade- Long Look at Humanists’ Use of Electronic Information Technology Stephen E. Wiberley, Jr. and William G. Jones A ten-year study of a group of humanists reveals that temporal factors had a significant impact on their adoption of electronic information tech­ nology. This article identifies and describes four types of time that influ­ ence humanists’ behavior. Three are types of time spent: anticipated start­ up time, actual start-up time, and use time; the fourth is time of life, that is, the stage of a scholar’s project or career. Because the content of elec­ tronic resources is closely related to use of time, this article also dis­ cusses how content affects whether a scholar adopts an electronic re­ source. Librarians who are sensitive to humanists’ temporal considerations can better help them utilize technology. nline catalogs, word process­ ing, electronic mail, biblio­ graphic databases, statistical software, and spreadsheets all date from the 1970s. Electronic mailing lists appeared in the 1980s, and the World Wide Web began in the 1990s.1 In 1987, when the authors first interviewed a group of eleven humanists about their use of libraries, in­ formation, and technology, all had used online catalogs and seven did word pro­ cessing, but only two used e-mail. None had searched a bibliographic database, used statistical software, constructed a spreadsheet, or subscribed to an electronic mailing list. And, of course, none had used the Web.2 The careers of these eleven coin­ cide with the revolution in electronic in­ formation technology, so all the innova­ tions it has brought have been available to them, some for many years. What they have chosen to utilize and how they have done so helps librarians better understand one of their largest user groups. Conversations with humanists reveal several perspectives on electronic informa­ tion technology. A recurring theme is the way that temporal factors affect what scholars do. Earlier research also has found time to be an important influence on the adoption of electronic information technol­ ogy. This article addresses the question: How do temporal considerations influence the use of electronic information technol­ ogy by humanists? It explains four differ­ ent conceptions of time that librarians can use to understand how humanists inter­ act with electronic information technology. The article then looks at different informa­ tion technologies and shows how consid- Stephen E. Wiberley, Jr. is Bibliographer for the Social Sciences and Professor and William G. Jones is Assistant University Librarian and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; e-mail: wiberley@uic.edu and wgjones@uic.edu, respectively. The authors express special thanks to the scholars interviewed for their generous cooperation and to Anne Jordan-Baker and Robert W. Karrow Jr. for read­ ing drafts of this article. 421 mailto:wgjones@uic.edu mailto:wiberley@uic.edu 422 College & Research Libraries September 2000 erations of time influence humanists’ use of them. Also, because content is often fun­ damentally related to decisions humanists make about expenditure of time with elec­ tronic information technology, this article addresses issues of content of digital sources in the humanities. Before begin­ ning discussion of time and technologies, it is necessary to characterize the group of scholars studied, say something about the salient characteristics of their environment (that is, their home campus), and describe the conversations the authors had with them. The Scholars Studied At the time the authors conducted the bulk of the conversations on which this report is based (1997–1998), the ten humanists first interviewed in 1987–1988 were in mid- to late career. The median number of years since obtaining the Ph.D. was twenty- seven and the average was twenty-five, with a range of fifteen to thirty-four years. Because this was an older group and be­ cause it is widely assumed that younger scholars adopt electronic information tech­ nology more readily than older ones, the authors also spoke with three scholars who had received their Ph.D.s fewer than seven years earlier to learn how they might dif­ fer from the senior scholars. The net result is that humanists work alone more than other kinds of scholars do. In all, then, the authors talked with thir­ teen scholars (one of the original eleven had left the institution and was unavail­ able for interview). The ten from the origi­ nal cohort came from six departments: anthropology (two), English (three), his­ tory (two), history of art (one), political science (one), and women’s studies (one). All now were full professors. The three younger scholars were assistant professors in English, German, and history. All thir­ teen were humanists in that their work fit within the definition of the humanities developed in the course of this research: those fields of scholarship that strive to reconstruct, describe, and interpret the ac­ tivities and accomplishments of men and women by establishing and studying documents and artifacts created by those men and women. The political scientist and both anthropologists, to be sure, had collected some evidence themselves through fieldwork and interviews as other social scientists do. But the bulk of the sources they used were documents and artifacts created by the men and women whom they were studying. The senior faculty among the thirteen continue to be productive scholars, al­ though some are active in academic ad­ ministration and scholarship rather than scholarship alone, as had characterized all but one of them in 1987–1988. Also, some are taking advantage of their senior, ten­ ured status to devote themselves to a big project, where they defer publication of parts of their work with the aim of pre­ senting their findings in one major book. Those with significant administrative com­ mitments and those deferring publication differ from most humanists of lower aca­ demic rank who must devote themselves primarily to scholarship and produce pub­ lications in the near term in order to achieve tenure. On the other hand, signifi­ cant groups of senior humanists probably fit the patterns the senior fellows cut. The university where all these scholars work is a Carnegie Research University I, in a major American city that is extremely rich in library resources. Their home cam­ pus has been the site of significant inno­ vation in humanities computing. Both H- Net and the Text Encoding Initiative origi­ nated at the scholars’ institution. And there is significant strength of the campus’s hu­ manists by more traditional measures. This is perhaps best seen in twenty-five Na­ tional Endowment for the Humanities or Guggenheim fellowship winners between 1987 and 1999. At the center of the humani­ ties community is an institute for the hu­ manities where the authors met all the scholars described here. In the mid-1990s, the university made sure that all faculty members had a high-quality computer in their offices. This was especially significant Time and Technology 423 for humanists because in the late 1980s and early 1990s, although almost all had at least one computer, usually they had purchased their computer(s) themselves and some had only one machine, which was in their homes. The interviews followed a set of ques­ tions given to the scholars in advance of the meeting with them. The scholars were asked to focus on the past five years and the project(s) they pursued during that time. The authors inquired about the sources they used; their reliance on per­ sonal and institutional libraries; the au­ diences they write for; coauthorship; at­ tendance at scholarly meetings; and ad­ vice they sought from other scholars. In particular, they were asked about the use of electronic information technology, in­ cluding electronic library resources, com­ puter hardware and software, networks, and the effects of libraries and informa­ tion technology on their disciplines. The Humanist’s Time and Electronic Information Technologies Others who have studied how humanists work have noted the importance of time to these scholars. Deborah Lines Andersen, in a longitudinal (1992–1998) study of ninety-four historians found that lack of time and “fear of lost productivity through time spent learning and using electronic technologies” were among the primary barriers to use of electronic information access technologies.3 In Debora Shaw and Charles H. Davis’s 1994 survey of mem­ bers of the Modern Language Association, respondents reported that one of their greatest needs was more time to learn to use computer-based tools.4 Similarly, in a 1992 survey of faculty at the University Centers (Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Stony Brook) of the State University of New York, Judith A. Adams and Sharon C. Bonk found that lack of time was a no­ table obstacle to use of electronic informa­ tion and resources for humanists and other scholars.5 Warren Thorngate has written impor­ tant analyses of the role of time in the life of scholars.6 Among other things, he pointed out that although one can save time by doing two tasks simultaneously, this is frequently impossible (lecturing to a class and attending a committee meet­ ing); often difficult (comprehending Derrida while breathing); and sometimes counterproductive (crashing a car while talking on a cell phone). It could be argued that the more paradigmatic a discipline, the more possible it is for a scholar to do things simultaneously through surrogates. This is because paradigms allow operationalization of tasks that can be di­ vided and delegated. One indication of this is that fields that are more paradigmatic— those in the sciences and, to a lesser ex­ tent, those in the social sciences—have a higher incidence of coauthorship.7 As An­ thony Biglan wrote, “the paradigm per­ mits research problems to be efficiently broken into subproblems with confidence that the results for each part can be reinte­ grated.”8 For example, agreed-upon pro­ cedures in computer modeling of plant growth allow biosystems engineers to del­ egate work to undergraduates. Similarly, operationalized demo­ graphic categories, such as birth and death, allow social scientists to assign some aspects of data gathering and analy­ sis to research assistants. In contrast, it would be highly unconventional for a lit­ erary scholar to ask research assistants to deconstruct scenes from King Lear and then insert those deconstructions into an overall interpretation of the play. Like­ wise, interpretation of works of art is so individualistic that it would be difficult for four or even two coauthors to agree on an analysis of a particular artist’s work. The net result is that humanists work alone more than other kinds of scholars do. Certainly, humanists consult with other humanists to obtain references to the literature and primary sources and to learn what their colleagues are doing. They also turn to humanists and intelligent layper­ sons as sounding boards for new ideas and as readers for drafts of their writing.9 And a few have research assistants. But these aides largely fetch and photocopy. Ulti­ mately, as rates of coauthorship show, the 424 College & Research Libraries September 2000 humanist, more than any other kind of scholar, works alone.10 Recent data support previous studies. In the 1997 volumes of PMLA and Art Bulletin, 98 percent of ar­ ticles have a single author; in the 1997 vol­ umes of the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Political Science, 38 percent have single authors. The scholars the authors talked to use word processing for everything: class notes, correspondence, research notes, and manuscripts intended for publication. In the humanities, then, there is less room than in the sciences and social sci­ ences for the delegation of work and, there­ fore, the use of surrogates to employ vari­ ous forms of electronic information tech­ nology. Use of such technology can con­ tinue to grow in the sciences and social sciences with little or no change in the prac­ tices of scholars themselves because these scholars can delegate its use to assistants. But, in the humanities, the behavior of humanists themselves must change to in­ crease the use of technology. Consequently, if librarians are going to increase electronic information technology use in the humani­ ties, they are going to have to help human­ ists adopt and incorporate different tech­ nologies into their personal routines. Hu­ manists’ thinking about how technologies impinge on their time is crucial to their de­ ciding whether to begin—and to con­ tinue—to use them. Librarians who want to help humanists take advantage of elec­ tronic information technology can benefit from a discussion of how temporal con­ siderations affect what humanists do. The humanists interviewed for this study spoke in several ways of the rela­ tionships of their time to use of electronic information technology. Although there are variations in what each said, essentially they talked about four types of time. Three of these types were similar in that they involved work time, that is, time the schol­ ars expended. The fourth kind of time is not a matter of time spent but, rather, time of life—that is, historical time, referring to where scholars are in their careers and their research projects and how this posi­ tion along the temporal continuum influ­ ences their attitudes toward, and use of, electronic information technology. Antici­ pated start-up time is the time that scholars estimate they will spend to use a system, source, or service. For example, if scholars consider the possibility of installing a com­ puter at home, the amount of time they estimate installation will take is anticipated start-up time. Actual start-up time is the time required to set up equipment and systems and to learn to use them. For example, scholars who acquire a new computer for their homes expend time to set up this computer and learn its unfamiliar features. The time needed to set up and learn new features is actual start-up time. Use time is the time that scholars spend actually us­ ing a system, source, or service they have learned. Thus, if scholars spend three hours at home using their computers to write and send e-mail, those three hours are use time. Finally, time of life, or stage of research or career, means the stage or point in time in a particular project or a scholar’s career. Where scholars are in their research projects or their careers influences their desire or need for systems, sources, or ser­ vices and how they anticipate start-up time, respond to actual start-up time, and expend use time. For example, toward the end of work on a book, a scholar will be so focused on finishing, he or she may refuse to consider learning new electronic infor­ mation technologies. On the other hand, at the start of a new project, the scholar may be eager to try new technologies in the hope that he or she will save time in the long run. These contrasting attitudes reflect differences in time of life, or stage of career or project. The next section of this article describes the interviewees’ use of electronic information technology in terms of these four kinds of time. Interviewees’ Time and Use of Electronic Information Technologies Given that, with few exceptions, they worked alone and depended almost en­ tirely on themselves, the humanists inter­ http:alone.10 Time and Technology 425 viewed for this study showed great sen­ sitivity to use of their time. They were conscious of when they worked most ef­ fectively and, whenever possible, struc­ tured their schedules accordingly. One recognized that he needed variety in his work and looked forward to administra­ tive assignments after he had spent a large block of time devoted primarily to re­ search. Another observed that, unlike most productive scholars, he was ineffec­ tive when he tried to do research or write for just a few minutes at a time.11 When he took administrative assignments, as he did frequently, he always negotiated for one weekday off for research. By devot­ ing ten or more hours on that day and on Saturday to research, he was able to ad­ vance his scholarship. Both these schol­ ars, then, structured their lives so that they were fresh and focused and used de­ velopments in their careers to maximize their productivity during use time. The desire to make the most of use time has made word processing the most heavily and widely used electronic infor­ mation technology. With two exceptions, over the past decade, the senior human­ ists in the cohort had incorporated word processing into their lives more fully than any other technology. The two exceptions had the equipment at hand, in one case for five years and in the other case more recently, but they had used it selectively, relying more on memory typewriters. These two had been so comfortable and effective with other means that they an­ ticipated that start-up time with word pro­ cessing would be so great that it would decrease their productivity. For the other eight senior humanists, however, word processing was absolutely essential, an old friend, and was used wherever possible. And junior scholars took it completely for granted. Because word processing is so well established, the authors did not hear as many enthusiastic testimonials in tenth- year interviews as they did in initial and fifth-year interviews, when the joy of dis­ covery was still fresh. What the authors did hear was evidence that there is no nos­ talgia for pencil, pen, or typewriter. Schol­ ars use word processing because they are convinced it reduces use time for compo­ sition and revision. Because the write-up is crucial in the humanities and human­ ists prize good prose, the ability to revise easily is particularly important. The schol­ ars the authors talked to use word process­ ing for everything: class notes, correspon­ dence, research notes, and manuscripts in­ tended for publication. Use in these areas has been largely stable over the past five years, except for taking research notes. Here, the gradual acquisition of laptop computers has enabled almost all the scholars whose research is with archives, manuscript, or other noncirculating ma­ terials to word process their notes. After they begin to do this, they tend to move away from writing notes on paper, al­ though some print their notes in addition to maintaining them on disk. The second most heavily used electronic information technology is e-mail. Junior scholars took e-mail, as they did word pro­ cessing, completely for granted. For senior scholars, however, e-mail seems to have had a special relationship with adminis­ trative duties. For senior scholars—to use terms of the present discussion—use of e- mail has more often than not been related to time of life. First, some became profi­ cient with e-mail during administrative assignments. Second, those scholars active in administration had notably more e-mail traffic than those without administrative assignments. Some administrator/schol­ ars’ reported use of e-mail rivaled or sur­ passed persons in business, where middle managers receive and send about fifty messages per day.12 One administrator said she received about a hundred messages per day and sent twenty to thirty. Another said he did “tons” of e-mail. At the other end of the spectrum was one senior scholar (the only one) who was not an e-mail user. She explained that she did not use e-mail because it brought a lot of “garbage,” and this was dangerous because it consumed time. Another scholar expressed dismay at colleagues who checked their e-mail three times a day. He used it primarily to facilitate borrowing books from the library 426 College & Research Libraries September 2000 but otherwise dismissed it as a waste of time. To be sure, the last two scholars are extreme, but they highlight how expendi­ ture of time is key in humanists’ thinking. In general, there was moderate use of e- mail among the scholars studied. The three junior scholars described their e-mail ac­ tivity as “twenty to thirty messages per day,” “daily, but no obsession,” and “ten minutes” per day. John P. Walsh and Todd Bayma have suggested that the more col­ laborations scholars have with persons outside their home institutions, the more likely they are to use e-mail.13 Because humanists have few collaborations with persons outside their home institutions, they make limited use of e-mail for their scholarship. Limitations on use are not caused by humanistic technophobia—the heavy use by humanist/administrators shows humanists are not technophobic— but, rather, by e-mail’s limited value to ad­ vancement of their scholarship. The third most-used electronic informa­ tion technology is the online public access catalog (OPAC). Sometimes the scholars expressed frustration with changes related to OPACs. Two junior scholars commented that they missed card catalogs. But, given that today the only means of access to li­ brary collections is the OPAC and all the humanists relied on library collections, all of them used OPACs. Although OPAC use is not as frequent as word processing and e-mail, the interviews of the late 1980s showed that OPAC use generally preceded that of any other electronic information technology, even word processing.14, 15 A scholar can delegate OPAC searching to a research assistant, but many humanists lack such help. Lacking an assistant, schol­ ars usually search the catalog themselves. The alternative would be to ask a librar­ ian, but few humanists seem to have de­ veloped the habit of asking questions of general reference librarians. Furthermore, asking a librarian, unlike delegating to an assistant, entails an in-person visit to the library, an e-mail, or a phone call. All take more time than searching an OPAC by the scholars themselves, once they have mas­ tered the system. The interviewees use the Internet prin­ cipally for e-mail, but also for searching li­ brary resources, especially OPACs. Given that most of the humanists interviewed have one desktop in their office and another at home (and perhaps a laptop), regular use of the Internet is not surprising. However, what is surprising is that although the hu­ manists have computers readily at hand, some do not have Internet access both at home and in their office. In all cases, the scholars had one computer with Internet access, usually in their office. But some said that their other computer lacked Internet capability. Although it can be argued that technological or economic factors were re­ sponsible for this lack of connectivity, the humanists themselves explained it in terms of time. For most, it was a matter of use time. One whose home and office computers were both Internet ready said she never used the Web at home because she did not have the time to wait for the screen to dis­ play. One can contend better technology will solve this. But this scholar did not talk about such an adjustment. This is notewor­ thy because in other circumstances she did not let barriers that others might tolerate stand in her way. She spent her own funds on a research assistant and substantial sums for books and journals. To other interviewees it was a matter of use time in the most fundamental way. Two said they did not want to be hooked up at home to protect themselves from the potential interference of e-mail and Web use to their family life and their scholar­ ship. In another case, limited Internet ac­ cess was a matter of anticipated start-up time. In this instance, one of the three younger scholars said that at the start of a research leave the computer in her office was upgraded, and this gave her access to the library’s catalog primarily through a graphical interface with which she was not familiar. She did not anticipate that she could afford the time, while on leave, to master the steps needed to connect to the catalog to use the command-driven inter­ face with which she was familiar nor did she want to spend the time to learn to use the graphical interface. Consequently, http:processing.14 http:e-mail.13 Time and Technology 427 when she needed to use the catalog, she went to the library where she could use the old interface. She speculated that had she not been on leave, spending most of her time writing, she would have taken the time to learn to use the catalog from her office. In a sense, then, this was an is­ sue of time of life too. Given the stage of her work, expending the anticipated start­ up time was out of the question. Other than word processing, e-mail, and online catalogs, there are no universally (or almost universally) used information tech­ nologies. Five of the thirteen subscribe to electronic mailing lists. Interestingly, only one of these is a junior scholar and the list she subscribes to does not relate to her dis­ cipline. It is a bit surprising that so few sub­ scribe because H-Net is so prominent in the humanities. Two find full-text primary sources in digital form: one, a senior scholar, on the Web of materials, digitized originally; the other, a junior scholar, on CD-ROM of materials, originally print on paper, that had been digitized retrospectively. A senior scholar also uses a Web-based guide to pri­ mary sources she studies. Two senior schol­ ars do statistical analyses with the help of assistants. Two senior scholars have rela­ tional databases. Six scholars reported us­ ing bibliographic databases themselves, three of whom are the three junior scholars. Time and Content The interviews confirmed something that Stephen Lehmann and Patricia Renfro pointed out in the early 1990s: content is crucial.16 Without relevant content, no sys­ tem is worth the humanist’s use time. There are several examples of this. First, a historian of the early modern period of a country that uses a non-Roman alphabet revealed no fear of computers and con­ cluded her conversation with the authors by predicting that technology would have a great impact on her specialization. In this regard, she pointed to some projects that provided searchable databases of primary sources about the country she studies. However, she did not use them because they were for a time period different from the one she studies. Perhaps even more interesting was a second scholar whose use of electronic in­ formation technology had declined over the previous five years. Ten years ago, this person was at the lowest level in use of technology among the interviewees. Then, he used OPACs, but not word processing or e-mail. In the ensuing five years, he be­ came arguably the group’s heaviest user, building a relational database while in the archives using a laptop, sending and re­ ceiving e-mail, and word processing ev­ erything he could. But in the past five years, the press of administrative assign­ ments and a shift in his research interests had greatly lessened his use of comput­ ers. Now, he was studying two topics where the key documents were, for one, on microform, and, for the other, reports of local government agencies and commit­ tees that were available only in paper. Neither of these was digital, he explained, so he did not bother with electronic tech­ nology except for word processing, e-mail (which, as an administrator, he was using heavily), and searching library catalogs. The evidence in the local government documents was such that he did not use any software to summarize it. In contrast, the scholar in this round of interviews who was most enthusiastic about digital sources was one who had been quite negative toward electronic in­ formation technology ten years earlier. She had complained that technical diffi­ culties with word processing had slowed her work and she was not sure it was worth the effort. Now, however, she was sure of its usefulness. Her research inves­ tigates events in another country, and she is able to keep up with them by reading newspapers, official documents, and other sources posted on the Web. One major reason for heavier computer use in the sciences and social sciences is that much of the content—that is, the pri­ mary data—of those two areas is quanti­ tative and computers are best at manipu­ lating and analyzing quantitative data. In the humanities, however, it is not clear whether software that helps quantitative analyses, such as relational databases and http:crucial.16 428 College & Research Libraries September 2000 statistical packages, will ever receive much use. It is difficult to find much evi­ dence of quantification in the humanities. In the 1960s and 1970s, quantification was a growing force in the study of American history, but that growth ceased and then interest declined. It is reasonable to use the presence of tables in journal articles as an index of use of quantification in the field covered by that journal. The 1974– 1977 volumes of the Journal of American History had seventy-two tables in fifty- one articles; in contrast, the 1994–1997 volumes had fifteen tables in thirty-seven articles. One can look beyond history to literary studies and art scholarship and compare indicators of quantitative work in them with social science fields such as sociology and political science. In the 1997 If the humanities naturally pay less attention to quantitative content than the social sciences and sciences, they will always use electronic information technology less than the social sciences and sciences do. volumes of PMLA and Art Bulletin, there is one table among forty-one articles. In contrast, there are 353 tables in 105 articles in the 1997 volumes of the American So­ ciological Review and the American Journal of Political Science. Electronic information technology is used more readily and prof­ itably for quantitative rather than quali­ tative work. If the humanities naturally pay less attention to quantitative content than the social sciences and sciences, they will always use electronic information technology less than the social sciences and sciences do. Ultimately, the most important devel­ opment will be the extent to which hu­ manists use electronic information tech­ nology to access the primary sources— the content that is the basis of their work. Right now, two of the interviewees use digital primary sources. On the one hand, compared to five years ago when none used digital primary sources, this is a noteworthy increase. But, on the other hand, this represents only 15 percent of the cohort of both junior and senior schol­ ars. Compared with scientists and social scientists, this is a small percentage. In this, a fundamental distinction between the humanities and the social sciences and the sciences looms large. Humanists use primary sources of information that have been created by other people, whereas social scientists and scientists use sources they have helped to create, whether by fieldwork, surveys, or laboratory experi­ ment. And because the scientists have a role in creating their sources, they can record them with the best technology at hand—today, computer technology. For example, even qualitative social scientists, the scholars generally considered to be closest to humanists, seek software for entering and manipulating data they gain from interviews and other fieldwork.17 And quantitative social scientists and physical scientists started using computer technology as soon as it became available. Indeed, Morton Hunt argued that the ad­ vances in quantitative social science would have been impossible without the computer ’s ability to manipulate huge data sets.18 In contrast, most of the pri­ mary sources in the humanities were cre­ ated before digitization, so machine-read­ able versions are not readily at hand. Given the way humanists do their re­ search, and the nature and volume of the primary sources they use, it is unlikely that more than a few will comprehen­ sively digitize the sources they study. The authors’ interviews suggest that more and more scholars are digitizing small por­ tions of sources when they take notes on a computer. But none of the interviewees was scanning bodies of sources in the ar­ chives or converting groups of printed texts to machine-readable form. If these scholars were concentrating on a small body of material, it would make sense for them to digitize. But, in fact, the cohort studied, like most humanists, read through substantial—and in some cases, massive—quantities of primary sources. They read through all these sources to gain a general sense of their topics and, more important, to identify particular http:fieldwork.17 Time and Technology 429 passages that are especially relevant to the questions they are asking. They take notes on the key passages. Usually, the notes are textual, but in a small number of cases they may be quantitative. Because the crucial activity of the hu­ manist is reading the sources, for the in­ dividual scholar, there is, with one major exception, little advantage to digitizing them. Digitizing takes time and then, unless printed out, digital sources must be read on a screen. And, currently, screen display is normally far inferior in read­ ability to almost any print or handwrit­ ing on paper on which it is based. Hu­ manists would not be making good use of their time if they spent it digitizing sources so that they could read the digi­ tized versions with more difficulty than they read the originals. Reading source material on paper, then, is better than reading it on a screen. How­ ever, this assumes that a scholar can get to the paper. Much of the source material that humanists use exists in unique or rare cop­ ies and may be distant from those who need it. In these cases, if the scholar can­ not afford to go to the material or pay to have it copied, digital versions available on the Web can be indispensable. After being digitized, such unique sources can be transmitted anywhere. Transmission, not display, is one of the values of digital sources in the humanities. In short, though digitization by the individual scholar is unlikely, digitization by depositories can be highly advantageous. Unfortunately, so little is digitized cur­ rently that it is unlikely that a source origi­ nally on paper is available in machine- readable form. Only scholars in classical Greek studies can in some way claim that most of their primary sources are avail­ able in digital form. And even for them, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae has only one edition of each known work and, as Karen Ruhleder has stressed, currently lacks the critical apparatus that gives scholars who use print sources greater depth of under­ standing of those sources.19 One indica­ tor of how little has been digitized retro­ spectively is the use of such sources by the thirteen scholars interviewed. Only one is using a retrospectively digitized source, which was the complete works of a major author who has long been part of the Western canon. Despite the inferior readability of com­ puter screen display compared to print on paper and the very limited number of digitized sources, these sources may well grow in importance in humanistic schol­ arship. As the one humanist who uses retrospectively digitized sources pointed out, scholars can no longer make specific claims about the absence, presence, or fre­ quency of certain words in the writing of the major author she studied without first establishing the accuracy of their claims by searching and citing the CD-ROM ver­ sion of the author’s work. They have to do so because the computer is much faster and more accurate than any human reader in identifying particular instances of a given word. As more sources become digitized, using the digital version prob­ ably will become the norm for humanists who make assertions about specific, es­ pecially quantifiable, characteristics of the sources they study. Conclusion Conversations over ten years have re­ vealed that senior scholars, even those without much interest or inclination, are gradually—if in fits and starts and with some backsliding—using more and more electronic information technology. They normally began with the OPAC in their home library; then adopted word process­ ing; next, while on administrative assign­ ment, became regular e-mail users; and finally, did their own (occasional) searches on bibliographic databases. On one side of this norm are those who have used, regularly, only one or two of the first three technologies. On the other side are those who have personally used these normal technologies and much more (sometimes with the help of assistants). In virtually every instance, how technol­ ogy use affected a scholar ’s time influ­ enced—sometimes greatly—whether he or she adopted it. http:sources.19 430 College & Research Libraries September 2000 In some contrast to the senior human­ ists are the junior scholars. The younger humanists have been using OPACs, word processing, and e-mail throughout their careers. Yet, despite this rather basic dif­ ference, the junior scholars, like the senior scholars, will not adopt a technology that does not promise to save time or contains no content relevant to their work. Further­ more, no junior scholars subscribed to elec­ tronic mailing lists in their specialization, used the Web for source material, did sta­ tistical analysis, or built a relational data­ base, whereas at least two senior scholars had done each of these. The three junior scholars, but only three of the ten senior scholars, used bibliographic databases. This suggests that bibliographic databases may eventually join online catalogs, word processing, and e-mail as baseline compe­ tencies for humanists. Nevertheless, given the relative use in the past of print versions of these databases, it is unlikely that they will be used anywhere near as heavily as OPACs, word processing, and e-mail.20 Moving beyond generalizations about the rate of adoption of electronic informa­ tion technology by humanists, it is possible to discuss implications for policy by aca­ demic libraries and practice by academic librarians. To a significant extent, policy making entails predicting the future and how an organization can best be involved in that future. This study’s findings sug­ gest that humanists gradually will become more involved with electronic information technology, but that their involvement will always be influenced by considerations of time and will always be less than that of scholars whose fields are paradigmatic and who direct the creation of the evidence they use. Recognizing this difference is im­ portant. Discoveries in the humanities de­ pend on sources not previously brought to the attention of a discipline. If it is the case that sources that are most heavily used are most likely to be digitized, then, con­ versely, those least used are least likely to be digitized. Given this, any library that supports humanists must give priority to its paper sources. This is easy to forget in an environment where the digital is new and exciting. In terms of practice, academic librarians should keep in mind the four types of time that affect how a humanist views or uses electronic information technology. Carol Collier Kulthau, drawing on Lev Vygotsky, has pointed out that in the reference pro­ cess with students there are potentially fruitful “zones of intervention.”21 These are the times in a student’s stages of work where recommendations, assistance, or instruction may help advance a research project. Kulthau argues that librarians need to be alert to these stages so that they can provide help when it will do the most good. Similarly, there are points in a scholar ’s life when recommendations about information technology can be par­ ticularly helpful. At other times, pressure to adopt technology can be counterproduc­ tive. By being sensitive to when scholars have the time (and think they have the time), librarians can be most helpful in as­ sisting scholars to adopt electronic infor­ mation technology effectively. Rob Kling and Lisa Covi have shown how easy it is for librarians, technologists, and scholars to fail to see the bigger picture of technol­ ogy and the other’s viewpoint when work­ ing together.22 A key element in appreciat­ ing another person’s viewpoint is having categories for listening, having a sense of what the other might say. Librarians who are already aware of the ways that time can be important to humanists will be better able to hear what the humanists say. Notes 1. Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 3rd ed., ed. Anthony Ralston, Edwin D. Reilly, Caryl Ann Dahlin (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993); Nathan J. Muller, Desktop Encyclopedia of the Internet (Boston: Artech House, 1999); Alexander Hellemans and Bryan Bunch, The Timetables of Science (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998); Norman Nie, Dale Bent, and C. Hadlai Hull, SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970); International Ency­ clopedia of Information and Library Science, ed. John Feather and Paul Sturges (London and New http:together.22 http:e-mail.20 Time and Technology 431 York: Routledge, 1997). 2. Stephen E. Wiberley Jr. and William G. Jones, “Patterns of Information Seeking in the Humanities,” College & Research Libraries 49 (Nov. 1989): 638–45. 3. Deborah Lines Andersen, “Academic Historians, Electronic Information Access Technolo­ gies, and the World Wide Web: A Longitudinal Study of Factors Affecting Use and Barriers to That Use,” Journal of the Association of History and Computing, vol. 1, no. 1. Available online at: http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/jahcI1/Anderson/Anderson.HTML. 4. Debora Shaw and Charles H. Davis, “The Modern Language Association: Electronic and Paper Surveys of Computer-based Tool Use,” Journal of the American Society for Information Sci­ ence 47 (Dec. 1996): 932–40. 5. Judith A. Adams and Sharon C. Bonk, “Electronic Information Technologies and Resources: Use by University Faculty and Faculty Preferences for Related Library Services,” College & Re­ search Libraries, 56 (Mar. 1995): 126. 6. Warren Thorngate, “On Paying Attention,” in Recent Trends in Theoretical Psychology, Pro­ ceedings of the Second Biannual Conference of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology, ed. William J. Baker et al (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988); —–, “The Economy of Attention and the Development of Psychology,” Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne 31 (July 1990): 262–71. 7. Roger G. Baldwin and Ann E. Austin, “Toward Greater Understanding of Faculty Re­ search Collaboration,” Review of Higher Education 19 (fall 1995): 46–70. 8. Anthony Biglan, “Relationships between Subject Matter Characteristics and the Structure and Output of University Departments,” Journal of Applied Psychology 57 (June 1973): 210–11. 9. Idrisa Pandit, “Informal Communication in the Humanities: A Qualitative Inquiry” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1992): 170–72, 224–25, 238–39; Clara M. Chu, “Liter­ ary Critics at Work and Their Information Needs: A Research-Phases Model,” Library & Informa­ tion Science Research 21 (1999): 259–66. 10. James W. Endersby, “Collaborative Research in the Social Sciences: Multiple Authorship and Publication Credit,” Social Science Quarterly 77 (June 1996): 380; A. E. Bayer and J. C. Smart, “Career Publication Patterns and Collaborative Styles in American Academic Science,” Journal of Higher Education 62 (Nov.–Dec. 1991): 617. 11. Robert Boice, Jordan Michael Scepanski, and Wayne V. Wilson, “Librarians and Faculty Members: Coping with Pressures to Publish,” College & Research Libraries 48 (Nov. 1987): 494–503. 12. Steve Whittaker and Candace Sidner, “Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email,” in Culture of the Internet, ed. Sara Kiesler (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997), 288. 13. John P. Walsh and Todd Bayma, “Computer Networks and Scientific Work,” Social Studies of Science 26 (1996): 690–91. 14. Andersen found that more than 80 percent of historians responding used word process­ ing daily, but less than 25 percent used OPACs daily; see tables 5–6. 15. Wiberley and Jones, “Patterns of Information Seeking in the Humanities,” 639–40. 16. Stephen Lehmann and Patricia Renfro, “Humanists and Electronic Information Services: Acceptance and Resistance,” College & Research Libraries 52 (Sept. 1991): 409–13. 17. Thomas J. Richards and Lyn Richards, “Using Computers in Qualitative Research,” in Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998), 211–45. 18. Morton Hunt, Profiles of Social Science Research: The Scientific Study of Human Interactions (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1985), 34. 19. Karen Ruhleder, “‘Pulling Down’ Books vs. ‘Pulling Up’ Files: Textual Databanks and the Changing Culture of Classical Scholarship,” in The Cultures of Computing, ed. Susan Leigh Star (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 180–95. 20. Sue Stone, “CRUS Humanities Research Programme,” in Humanities Information Research: Proceedings of a Seminar, CRUS Occasional Paper no. 4, British Library Research and Develop­ ment Department, report no. 5588 (Sheffield, Eng.: Centre for Research in User Studies, Univ. of Sheffield, 1980), 15–16; Deidre Corcoran Stam, “The Information-Seeking Practices of Art Histo­ rians in Museums and Colleges in the United States, 1982–83” (D.L.S. diss., Columbia Univ., 1984), 189–92; Susan S. Guest, “The Use of Bibliographic Tools by Humanities Faculty at the State University of New York at Albany,” Reference Librarian 18 (summer 1987): 157–72; Margaret F. Stieg, “The Information Needs of Historians,” College & Research Libraries 42 (Nov. 1981): 549–60. 21. Carol Collier Kuhlthau, “Students and the Information Search Process: Zones of Interven­ tion for Librarians,” Advances in Librarianship 18 (1994): 63–64. 22. Lisa Covi and Rob Kling, “Organizational Dimensions of Effective Digital Library Use: Closed Rational and Open Natural Systems Models,” Journal of the American Society for Informa­ tion Science 47 (Sept. 1996): 672–89. http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/jahcI1/Anderson/Anderson.HTML