TECHNOLOGIES

Based on a qualitative case study at the Society for the Humanities (Cornell University), this project investigates how information and communication technologies (ICTs) support research and scholarly discourse by humanities scholars. The research is guided by the principles of grounded theory and social informatics in gathering and analyzing data about scholars ’ perceptions and accounts of technology use. The research strategy is built on the premise that technologies are mutually constituted by interactions between the properties of technological artifacts and their broader context. The study not only examines the practices of scholars who employ technologies but also attempts to understand the perspectives of those who choose not to integrate them into their workflows. Several themes emerge to illustrate the situated, fluid, and emergent nature of technology assessment and adaptation. They include the evolving notions of distance and place, the enduring value of the affordances of physical knowledge spaces, the increasing role of search engines in research, and changing patterns of reading and interdisciplinary collaborations. Also considered are the role of multimoda