Exploring Regional Development of Digital Humanities Research: A Case Study for Taiwan

Abstract: This study analyzed references and source papers of the Proceedings of 2009-2012 International Conference of Digital Archives and Digital Humanities (DADH), which was held annually in Taiwan. A total of 59 sources and 1,104 references were investigated, based on descriptive analysis and subject analysis of library practices on cataloguing. Preliminary results showed historical materials, events, bureaucracies, and people of Taiwan and China in the Qing Dynasty were the major subjects in the tempo-spatial dimensions. The subject-date figure depicted a long-low head and short-high tail curve, which demonstrated both characteristics of research of humanities and application of technology in digital humanities. The dates of publication of the references spanned over 360 years, which shows a long time span in research materials. A majority of the papers (61.41%) were single-authored, which is in line with the common research practice in the humanities. Books published by general publishers were the major type of references, and this was the same as that of established humanities research. The next step of this study will focus on the comparison of characteristics of both sources and references of international journals with those reported in this article.