56 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY 1. orientation and overview
2. focused exploration 3. member checking
In the first phase, a research focus had been established, namely “collab-oratories digital libraries”, and “issue subquestions”(Stake, 1995) followed naturally through the process.
The digital humanities community has been chosen to be the unit of analysis.
A personal wiki system has been used during the whole research process, acting also as a case database, storing notes and transcriptions of interviews.
Customized folders archived the audio files of the online interviews.
Second phase, focused exploration, comprehend data collection and it-erative analysis, which means reacting properly to emerging themes. As Pickard (2007) suggests, “one of the greatest case study benefits is the abil-ity to respond as [the researcher’s] knowledge of the case increases”.
Third phase include member checking and verification of analysis: ex-iting the field is then the final stage of the research process, when all data cease to reveal new information.
3.6. TARGET GROUP AND SAMPLING 57 3.6.1 Purposive snowball sampling
Pickard (2007, p. 64) cites Patton (2002, p. 169) about purposive sampling The logic of purposeful sampling lies in selecting information-rich cases for study in depth. Information-information-rich cases are those from which one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the research
Purposive sampling is the preferred practice for case study method, and can be run in two different ways, a priori criteria sampling and snowball sampling.
As the present study is the first attempt of the researcher to qualitative research, it demanded some boundaries to the sample, and Flick (2002) suggests a priori criteria to be more helpful for “analyzing, differentiating and perhaps testing assumptions about common features and differences between groups”(p. 63, cited in Pickard, 2007, p. 64).
Nonetheless, Pickard (2007) also highlights that “in any bounded system there are “key informants”who will have a great deal of knowledge about the case as a whole and what goes on at a variety of levels within the case”. As the research aimed to understand and investigate opinions of the Humanities community Italian context regarding collaboration and collaborative digital libraries, help of key informants was estimated to be extremely useful and snowball sampling seemed to fit perfectly the purpose and the interactive design of the research. Thus, snowball sampling was actually chosen: com-monly, its exit strategy for is redundancy of information gathered (Lincoln &
Guba, 1985). Moreover, literature suggests also that even though the choice of the first key informant is likely to be biased, the subsequent gathering of the participants reduces the bias (Ford, 1975).
3.6.2 Key informants
Key informants of the study were two, one from the US context (who sug-gested an extensive bibliography to meet the lack of Italian references on the topic) and the other one was Umberto Eco.
58 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY Professor Eco was interviewed for a project called “Wiki@Home”, sup-ported by the Italian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation4, Wikimedia Italia5. Wikimedia Italia (WMI) is an association for open culture and open knowledge, and it supports Wikimedia projects as Wikipedia and Wikisource. Wiki@Home is a subproject of WMI which is aimed to inter-view important members of the cultural and entertainment world. In this context, the researcher contacted and gained and appointment with pro-fessor Eco to interview him about Internet, collaboration and Wikipedia.
The researcher thus exploited this unique occasion to utilize professor Eco as a key informant for the study, investigating topics as collaboration be-tween scholars, especially in the Italian context. Interview revealed to be extremely rich and helpful to gain in-depth information about Humanities in the Italian area and their approach to Internet and collaboration. The tran-script of the interview is available (in Italian) under Creative Commons-Attribution-Shar Alike license at the URL: http://it.wikinews.org/
wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco
The English translation will be available in Appendix 1.
3.6.3 Interviewees
Interviewees were 5 members of the Digital Humanities Italian community, each with a different specialization (greek philology, modern literature, digi-tal libraries, even history of logic), but all involved in digidigi-tal humanities and digital libraries. They are working in academic and research institutions in Italy, UK and US.
The first interviewee was contacted after an overview of the literature and a conversation with the advisor: the others were too selected from the literature and with the method of snowball sampling. At the end of each interview, scholars were requested to suggest other people to be interviewed, and often participants converged proposing the same names. People who were named by more than one participant were contacted: every name has been discussed with the thesis advisor.
4http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
5http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Who_we_are
3.6. TARGET GROUP AND SAMPLING 59 Participants have been labeled by numbers, from I1 to I5. From in-terviewee I1 (who served also as a pilot for interviews), I6 and I3 were individuated. The researcher and the advisor agreed to interview I2, who then suggested also I3 and I4.
After I5, the information gathered started to be redundant, which ac-cording to Pickard (2007) is a condition for exit fieldwork; thus, data collec-tion stopped, with the consent of the advisor.
All but one the participants were Italian: therefore, all but one of the interviews was conducted in Italian.
Italian audience had been privileged for several reasons:
• the core interest of the research was on collaborative digital libraries for the Humanities Italian community
• speaking Italian allowed both the researcher and participants to be more comfortable during interviews and helped in-depth data analysis The researcher spent great effort in translating correctly interviews, not to mispell or provide a wrong interpretation of interviewees’ words. The transcription of Eco’s interview provided in Appendix 1 has been translated collaboratively among members of Wikimedia Italy: one of them is actually a professional translator and guaranteed a correct and formal approach for the translation.
Although the research question was focused on the Humanities commu-nity in the Italian context, sampling did not choose only Italian philologists for purpose: in fact, context suggested that only people previously involved in digital humanities and digital libraries could understand and have moti-vated opinions about a specific and in-depth question as the research ques-tions of the present studies. Sometime, they did work in related but different communities (i.e. the Greek philology community). However, difference of language does not seem an obstacle for transferability of both the structure and even the outcomes of the study. A crucial aspect of the present case study is obviously environmental culture of the community, and everyone but one of the interviewees are Italian. This choice was made to explore the Italian environment of humanities but not being subjected only to a single community of practice.
60 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY