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3.7. DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES 61 There were some exceptions where interviews had been conducted live or by e-mail.
3.7.1 Interviews
Conversation is a basic mode of human interaction. Human beings talk to each other. . . Through conversations we get to know other people, get to learn about their experiences, feelings, and hopes and the world they live in. (Kvale, 1996, p. 23)
Interviews are frequently used data collection techniques in information re-search (Pickard, 2007). They are applied to “access what was in, and on, the interviewee’s mind”(Stenhouse, 1984).
As the present research is focused in exploring researchers and users opinions about possibilities and potentialities of a collaboratory digital li-brary, interviews allows them to express complex and articulated thoughts.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) suggest that interview permit respondents to go back and forth in time, interpreting past and present and predicting the fu-ture: the explicit request of foreseeing developments in digital libraries and scholarship collaboration made interviews perfectly fitting data collection techniques.
Furthermore, “qualitative, descriptive, in-depth data [. . . ] specific to the individual”(Pickard, 2007, p. 172) were requested by the purposes of the research.
Kvale (1996) lays out seven stages of the interview process, (thematizing, designing, interviewing, transcribing, analyzing, verifying, reporting) but Pickard (2007) argues process is often not as linear as suggested. She hints to use the stages as a broad outline of the process, but being “prepared to iteration”(p. 173). Moreover, interviewing as a whole is a practice that is learned by doing and often beginners start being confident with their personal procedure after several interviews.
Thematizing
Is necessary to be very clear about the purpose of the research and the topic that is being investigated. Themes and questions are needed to be
62 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY appropriate for each interviewee, because it is likely to ask different people different things.
It is suggested to structure themes of the interview in a natural order to allow “interviewee to follow a logical thought process and allow[ing] the interviewer to gain a growing understanding of feelings, behavior and be-liefs”(p. 173).
Designing
The purpose of using an interview guide is to “ensure that each interview covers basically the same ground but gives the interviewer considerable dis-cretion in the conduct of the interview”(Ellis, 1993, p. 475). The guide controls the interview and its dependent to the chosen type of interview:
it can range from a strict script (actually similar to a questionnaire) to a general list of topics to be covered during the conversation.
Interviews accomplished were more of the second type: they were semi-structured, and only few questions and topics (i.e the research questions) were necessary and did recur in each conversation. The guide of the interview was the following:
• self presentation of the interviewee, explaining his academic back-ground and interests
• the research questions
1. H2: Can a digital library for the Italian studies community be collaborative?
2. H2: Can a digital library for the Italian studies community be a collaboratory?
3. H3: Can a digital library for the Italian studies community be built upon a wiki ?
• an opinion about facilitators and barriers to collaboration in humani-ties and digital humanihumani-ties
• an opinion about features and services of possible collaborative frame-works for humanists
3.7. DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES 63
Interviewing
Interviewing is heavily dependent on the rapport between interviewer and interviewee: conversation has to be as much as relaxing and comfortable as possible, and is responsibility of the interviewer to make it happen. Further-more, interviewer needs to be prepared on topics covered by the interview and react properly to answers: questions has to be asked and answer can lead to unforeseen but meaningful paths.
Role of the interviewer is “to listen, reflect and respond ”(Pickard, 2007, p. 177).
Due to the non-existence, in the Italian context, of collaborative and col-laboratories digital libraries, it was sometime difficult to provide interviewees with practical examples of features and characteristics of such projects. In those cases, the interviewer had to discuss hypothetically and with scenarios on what kinds of services, functionalities and features a collaboratory digi-tal library may offer. Discussions were therefore theoretical and focused on potentialities, barriers and facilitators.
The consent of interviewees was asked in order to voice record the re-sponses and discussions arisen out of the interview.
Audio recording revealed fundamentally important to keeping all the data and listen interviews several times: furthermore, it provided security and allowed interviewer to be totally engaged in conversation not taking care of writing every important quote or note. Interviews were audio recorded with Skype Call Recorder7, a free/open source software for Linux that automatically records Skype conversations and save them in different for-mats. Audio recordings were mp3 files stored in different folders, divided by authors.
Transcribing
Transcription is suggested to be done as soon as possible after the interview.
Qualitative research needs engaging with interviews as their done, to look for emerging patterns and important data. Transcribing informs researcher and provides insights of the interviewing process, making him aware of possible
7http://atdot.ch/scr
64 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY flaws of his procedure. Transcribing were therefore done commonly the second day after the interview, because most of the interviews were recorded in the evening.
Analysis
Analysis “is a constant, ongoing element of the research process”(p. 178).
It will be described later on.
Verifying
Kvale (1996) intend the verification as the stage to understand if the inter-view covered the extent of the research question. Pickard (2007, p. 178) adds that verification is “a form of member check ”, a concept introduced by Lincoln and Guba (1985). Returning to the interviewees after transcription and analysis can confirm or deny if the interviewer had understood what they really meant, and can also be an opportunity to harvest new data.
Websites and other literature were used to verify some of the issues that were mentioned in the process of the interview; mutually, projects and ar-ticles suggested in interviews were explored for in-depth understanding of the interviews themselves. The process also helped to verify the names of initiatives and projects.
Reporting
Evidence from interviews must form the foundation of the new researcher’s emerging theory, and this must be present in the final report. Pickard (2007) highlights that “spoken word is evidence”(p. 179), hence important verba-tim quotes important were reported.
A pilot, unstructured interview has been conducted with the first key informant, who is also a friend of the researcher. The interview has been useful also to get acquainted with the interview process and ways of exploring the defined topics. After the pilot and a discussion with the thesis advisor, a set of open-ended questions had been defined to be the guide of further interviews.