4. The Impact of Digital Resources

Warwick and Bailey-Ross begin the chapter with a tone of scepticism, examining why there is a bias among students, university managers funding councils, and policy makers alike towards digital resources. In this chapter, they examine what impact digital resources might have, upon whom, in what way and how it might be measured. Beginning by detailing the history of impact-assessment within the GLAM sector and analysing the weaknesses in current evaluation models, they critique Sara Selwood and Simon Tanner’s models of impact assessment before arguing that it is oversimplifying to draw a distinction between research-based digital resources created by academics and the digitisation of collections and resources by GLAM institutions. The authors revisit the case studies assessed by the UK’s Research Excellence Framework, highlighting how the text-mining methods used have limitations. They conclude that even though digital humanities can have an impact on numerous sectors, the impact itself is not easy to measure— one of the main issues being the question of continued funding for digital resources post-publication, which must be considered by.