“scholarship’s three main filters for importance are failing … new forms [now] reflect and transmit [additional forms of] scholarly impact: that dog-eared (but uncited) article that used to live on a shelf now lives in Mendeley, CiteULike, or Zotero — where we can see and count it. That hallway conversation about a recent finding has moved to blogs and social networks — now, we can listen in. The local genomics dataset has moved to an online repository — now, we can track it. This diverse group of activities forms a composite trace of impact far richer than any available before. We call the elements of this trace altmetrics.”
While some of these claims may be true of science and medical, the research suggests the humanities are rather lacking in engagement with new technologies and blogs / social media — beyond standard Web use, sharing Powerpoint slides and using services like Google Docs.