Page 226 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of Journal of Library Science in China 2016 Vol.42 225

The evolution path and hot topics of digital humanities research

KE Ping & GONG Ping ①a *

The emergence of digital humanities has a profound impact on the research process and content
of the humanities,and it is naturally connected to the library whose main function is knowledge
organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Library Science and
digital humanities,to seek the integration of development paths,and to broaden the research field
of Library Science through the statistical analysis and data mining on the digital humanities.
The paper sets Web of Science core data as the data sources,including SCI-E(1965-
2015),SSCI(1965-2015)and A & HCI(1975-2015),and chooses articles for document type. In
order to fully reflect the general picture of the field of digital humanities,we obtain basic data set
by using the key words “humanities digital” and “computing humanity”. Then we select digital
history,computational linguistics,digital art,digital archaeology as search terms to mine in the
field；we select computational turn,GIS,text mining and visualization,virtual reality,social
media as search terms in order to reveal the text mining and visualization technology in the
humanities；we select E-research,digital scholarly as search terms to explore humanities research
practice and academic culture under the drive of the digital humanities. We finally obtain 958
related articles as data analysis set. Using SATI3.2,CiteSpaceIII tool,the paper carries out the
quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis on those papers.
The study shows that computational linguistics,the construction of large-scale databases and
electronic text have contributed to the birth of humanities computing,which becomes a cross
research field of computer science and the humanities. Along with the development of digital
humanities research,its connotation becomes more compatible and emphasizes computational
turn,and considers the reconstruction of the context and content of humanistic knowledge,so
as to construct the contemporary knowledge system and cognitive style. The evolutionary
path of the digital humanities research shows that the theory,method,and practice of Library
Science and digital humanities research have the trend of synergetic development. From
the perspective of technology application and data foundation,Library Science is the basic
subject of digital humanities,and it will be one of the main applications of digital humanities
achievements.
The hot topics of digital humanities research are as follows:the basic theoretical questions
of the digital humanities,the turning of academic practice in humanities under the drive of
technologies,the change of academic culture in humanities caused by a new mode of cooperation
and the construction of the infrastructure for the study of digital humanities. Comparative
analysis shows Library Science is a basic subject of digital humanities. The practice and research
of the digital humanities cannot be separated from the database and electronic text which are

* Correspondence should be addressed to GONG Ping, Email: gongping418@163.com, ORCID:0000-0003-2623-5783