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Help improve online search for humanities resources

The University of Sheffield is undertaking research with the intention of improving search within the humanities. The AHRC-funded project called ‘Participating in Search Design: A Study of George Thomason’s English Newsbooks‘ is a collaboration between the Humanities Research Institute and the departments of History (Professor Mike Braddick, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Arts and Humanities), English (Dr Marcus Nevitt) and Sociological Studies (Dr Bridgette Wessels).

We are seeking participants ranging from PhD students to Professors in the research areas of History, English Language, English Literature, Politics and Journalism to answer a short survey about your current research practice, including your overall understanding of search and the advantages and drawbacks of web-based vs. more traditional text-based methods.

If this applies to you please follow the link to the survey below. It will only take 10 minutes of your time and your opinions will be of great value to our work and the wider impact of the project.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/researchpractice

The knowledge gained from this will be used to inform the design of better search interfaces for online resources, which genuinely meet the needs of the research community. The test dataset is approximately 50,000 pages of 17th century newsbooks collected by George Thomason.

The survey will be open until Monday 16th April. Results will then be fed back to survey respondents and there will also be the opportunity for further participation in the project. The survey is completely anonymous and complies with the University of Sheffield’s Ethics Policy.

Please contact Keira Borrill for further information about the project or follow us on Twitter and visit
the project blog.

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