What Do Humanities Scholars Need? A User Model for Recommendation in Digital Archives
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arXiv
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| Hauptverfasser: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866911574262808576 |
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| author | Atzenhofer-Baumgartner, Florian Kowald, Dominik |
| author_facet | Atzenhofer-Baumgartner, Florian Kowald, Dominik |
| contents | User models for recommender systems (RecSys) typically assume stable preferences, similarity-based relevance, and session-bounded interactions -- assumptions derived from high-volume consumer contexts. This paper investigates these assumptions for humanities scholars working with digital archives. Following a human-centered design approach, we conducted focus groups and analyzed interview data from 18 researchers. Our analysis identifies four dimensions where scholarly information-seeking diverges from common RecSys user modeling: (1) context volatility -- preferences shift with research tasks and domain expertise; (2) epistemic trust -- relevance depends on verifiable provenance; (3) contrastive seeking -- researchers seek items that challenge their current direction; and (4) strand continuity -- research spans long-term threads rather than discrete sessions. We discuss implications for user modeling and outline how these dimensions relate to collaborative filtering, content-based, and session-based recommendation. We propose these dimensions as a diagnostic framework applicable beyond archives to similar application domains where typical user modeling assumptions may not hold. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_06232 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | What Do Humanities Scholars Need? A User Model for Recommendation in Digital Archives Atzenhofer-Baumgartner, Florian Kowald, Dominik Digital Libraries Information Retrieval User models for recommender systems (RecSys) typically assume stable preferences, similarity-based relevance, and session-bounded interactions -- assumptions derived from high-volume consumer contexts. This paper investigates these assumptions for humanities scholars working with digital archives. Following a human-centered design approach, we conducted focus groups and analyzed interview data from 18 researchers. Our analysis identifies four dimensions where scholarly information-seeking diverges from common RecSys user modeling: (1) context volatility -- preferences shift with research tasks and domain expertise; (2) epistemic trust -- relevance depends on verifiable provenance; (3) contrastive seeking -- researchers seek items that challenge their current direction; and (4) strand continuity -- research spans long-term threads rather than discrete sessions. We discuss implications for user modeling and outline how these dimensions relate to collaborative filtering, content-based, and session-based recommendation. We propose these dimensions as a diagnostic framework applicable beyond archives to similar application domains where typical user modeling assumptions may not hold. |
| title | What Do Humanities Scholars Need? A User Model for Recommendation in Digital Archives |
| topic | Digital Libraries Information Retrieval |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06232 |