Qualitative data sheds light on user profiles in multilingual digital humanities, suggesting actionable steps for a more inclusive digital scholarship.
Building upon previous work on the study of the multilingual digital humanities (DH) community through user experience (UX) lens and the conclusions of a workshop held at the DH2023 conference, in this article, we argue that qualitative data about users helps us document the complex and rapidly growing communities of multilingual DH. We do so by considering a hitherto understudied perspective in this context—the composition of the users themselves. We underscore the importance of listening to voices from the community and call for further research to be done on this diverse multilingual DH community. Constructing user profiles allows us to focus on building infrastructure adapted to the needs of those users. Moreover, we discuss the intersectional challenges that arise during the creation of multilingual DH user profiles and provide recommendations that can be shared with many communities adjacent to the profession for consideration and further development. We emphasize the necessity of considering how intersectional identities have an impact on the user profiles, and how they too can be integrated into data-driven user profile design. Finally, we also suggest practical actionable steps for stakeholders in university libraries, DH instruction, hiring, evaluation, promotion and tenure committees, research computing communities, funding agencies, and transnational DH organizations for integrating a vision of a more linguistically inclusive digital scholarship into their own mandates.
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Horváth et al. (2025) studied this question.
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