Humanities Scholars and Databases for Ancient Chinese Books

電子資源的普及使得資訊的來源更為多元。許多研究都發現人文學研究者的電子資源使用行為與科技領域研究者的使用行為有顯著的差異，無論是使用頻率及引用頻率，前者均低於後者，而在閱讀方式方面，兩者也有明顯的不同。不過，研究也指出，人文學者較為依賴圖書。在當今人文領域電子全文資料庫（多為古籍全文資料庫）日漸增多的情況下，人文學者使用古籍全文資料庫之行為的確是值得探討的議題。本研究訪談十位國立大學中文系及歷史系教授，探討人文學者使用古籍全文資料庫之情形，包括使用之目的、檢索之方式、閱讀之方式、遭遇之困難，以及人文學研究者對於古籍全文資料庫之看法及其對學術研究之影響。研究結果顯示，人文學者在研究及教學時都會使用古籍全文資料庫，雖然普遍同意資料庫檢索的便利性及完整性，但也指出中文古籍全文資料庫無論是收錄範圍、內容品質、檢索介面都有可以改進之處。他們不認為古籍全文資料庫對於文史領域的研究議題有太大的改變，也不同意古籍全文資料庫可以取代紙本古籍的說法。In every field, scholars find an increasing availability of electronic resources. Studies have shown that humanities scholars use and cite fewer electronic resources than their science and technology counterparts. Moreover, humanities scholars prefer monographs to periodicals or other resources. They continue to use ancient books and documents. In the digital era, many full-text databases of ancient Chinese books and documents have been created. In this study, ten professors of Chinese literature or history are interviewed to answer the following: What are the purposes of using the databases? How do they search the databases? How do they compare the databases to paper versions? What are the impacts of those databases on research in the humanities? All ten scholars report that they use digital databases of ancient Chinese books in both teaching and research. They find the databases easy to access and time-saving when retrieving documents. Most report that databases do not change their research methods or research interests. The scholars suggest that the coverage, quality and search interface should be improved to make the databases even more useful. In conclusion, however, they disagree about whether or not these databases will replace the paper versions