HUMANISTS REVISITED - A LONGITUDINAL LOOK AT THE ADOPTION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Developments in information technology have had a major impact on the conduct of research and scholarship. In general, humanists have been s lower than scientists and social scientists to adopt new technologies in their work. This paper, a longitudinal study of eleven humanists, c orroborates the general pattern and provides insight into why humanist s use technology as they do. It relates its findings to a definition o f the humanities: those fields of scholarship that strive to reconstru ct, describe, and interpret the activities and accomplishments of men and women by establishing and studying documents and artifacts created by those men and women. The discussion emphasizes that the primary ev idence that humanists use differentiates them from scientists and soci al scientists.