ALLC: Proposed Name Change

The Executive Committee of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing is currently considering changing the name of the association to "ALLC: The European Association for Digital Humanities."

Rationale
 

The association broadened its focus from literary and linguistic studies to the digital humanities as a whole some time ago, and the name change we propose would make it easier to communicate that message to a wider audience, at a time of ‘big tent‘ digital humanities. In addition, the new name expresses the wish of the ALLC to provide a platform for newly established or shortly to be established regional or national initiatives in the area of digital humanites, and to represent these initiatives in Europe.

At the same time, the association continues to uphold its strong commitment to fostering emerging DH activities world wide. We envisage a role for the ALLC as a global player in Digital Humanities, extending the DH network whilst also offering specific support for local groups in Europe, surveying and reporting on new ideas and initiatives across the continent and furthering their international visibility.

We will continue to do all of this under the umbrella of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), which provides funding for a range of initiatives, including bursaries, publications and the annual international Digital Humanities conference, next year to be held in Hamburg, Germany: http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/.

 
European focus

The ALLC is keen to work with other European initiatives to promote digital humanities in Europe, and will explore making its infrastructure available to them by:

• sharing and collecting information through the ALLC web portal
• hosting websites of partner European groups on the ALLC server
• advising newly established initiatives on relevant topics
• facilitating publication via the many publication platforms managed by ADHO, and including the journal "LLC: The Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities", for which the ALLC was the founding organisation. In this regard it may be necessary to broaden the Advisory Board and reviewers panel of LLC to include any regions or language areas that seem under-represented at present.

 
International activities: extending the global network of DH initiatives.
 
Although the new name signals a more prominent regional focus, the association will remain strongly committed to fostering and supporting emerging international DH initiatives. In particular, "ALLC: The European Association for Digital Humanities" will continue to fund relevant DH activities from all over the world.
 
The ALLC Executive Committee is keen to receive feedback from its members about the proposed name change and with this in mind will add a poll to the upcoming election procedure. We are of course also keen to hear from people who are not currently members of the ALLC and invite you to send us feedback at namechange[at]allc.org.