Reaching Out: What do Scholars Want from Electronic Resources?

The potentials for teaching and learning using technology are tremendous. Now, more than ever before, computers have the ability to spread scholarship around the globe, teach students with new methodologies, and engage with primary resources in ways previously unimaginable. The interest among humanities computing scholars has also grown. In fact at ACH/ALLC last year, Claire Warwick and Ray Siemens et al. gave some excellent papers on the humanities scholar and humanities computing in the 21st century. Additionally, in the most recent version of College and Research Libraries (September 2004), a survey was conducted specifically among historians to determine what electronic resources they use. The interest in this is obviously growing, and the University of Michigan as both a producer of large digital projects as well as a user of such resources is an interesting testing ground for this kind of survey data. Theoretically, Michigan should be a potential model for high usage and innovative research and teaching. In many cases it is; nevertheless, when one looks at the use of electronic resources in the humanities across campus and their use in both the classroom and innovative research, it is not what it could be. The same is true at other universities. At many universities across the U.S. and Canada, including those with similar large scale digitization efforts, use remains relatively low and new potentials of electronic resources remain untapped. Why?