Improving User Control and Transparency in the Digital Humanities

Digital humanities is a research field focused on the intersection of computer science and the humanities. The development of new search, analysis, personalisation and collaboration tools are some examples of how information technology has hugely benefited humanities practitioners. Despite the obvious benefits computers bring, users often feel a lack of control over, or understanding of, the automatic processing underlying digital humanities systems. This control is important to curators of digital archives who need to maintain the integrity of their collection, as well as to end users who might not understand why they are receiving particular recommendations or search results. The CULTURA project is developing a next-generation digital humanities portal, which provides users with more control over the underlying systems and makes more transparent the processes involved. This paper discusses this with reference to entity extraction and personalisation techniques.