ALLC AGM 040697

Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing held at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, on Wednesday 4th June 1997 at 20.30 hours

1. Apologies were received from John Dawson, Marilyn Deegan, Christian Delcourt, Kurt Gardner, Lisa Lena Opas, and Antonio Zampolli. Nineteen members were present.

3. There were no matters arising from the Minutes not dealt with as separate items.

Chairman: Susan Hockey confirmed the decision made last year that she would not be standing for re-election and reported that Harold Short would take over as Chairman. Jean Anderson (University of Glasgow) would replace Mr. Short as treasurer.

Gordon Dixon had now stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, with Marilyn Deegan replacing him and Stuart Lee being appointed Assistant Editor. Paul Fortier and Michael Sperberg-McQueen had been re-elected to the Committee for a further 3 year term, and Lou Burnard had been elected to replace Marilyn Deegan, who was now an officer of the Association.

Susan Hockey reported the receipt of two documents from Willard McCarty seeking to define the relationship between the ALLC and both Humanist and Computing in the Humanities Working Papers (CHWP). Willard McCarty explained his proposals to the meeting, and Susan Hockey informed members that it had been agreed in principle that Humanist be viewed as a complementary activity to the Association, that the Editor should have an ex officio relationship with the ALLC Committee and that the old Advisory Board be reconstituted with half of its members coming from the ALLC and half from the ACH. At which time the current Editor resigns, the ALLC would, together with the ACH, undertake to appoint a successor and see that support is found so that Humanist may continue to be published. The meeting expressed its gratitude to Willard McCarty for continuing as Editor. A working party would be set up to produce an appropriate statement of the relationship between Humanist and the ALLC.

Concerning CHWP, it was agreed that a relationship with the ALLC could be mutually beneficial given that CHWP defines an area complementary to both the Journal and CHum. Susan Hockey informed the members that the editors of the Journal had been asked to work with both Willard McCarty and the ACH to put into place both official confirmation and details concerning the nature of the relationship.

Treasurer: Harold Short presented the accounts and remarked on the healthy financial position of the Association. He informed members that this position was directly linked to the work put in by Oxford University Press, and he thanked them for their efforts. Since the OUP accounts do not appear until July of each year, he proposed to rescind the change in the financial year agreed at the 1996 Committee meeting and return to a January-December year.

Harold Short expressed the wish that ALLC monies be spent productively on promotion of the Association. In addition to the Bursary Scheme, which allows for five winners each year, he informed members of the introduction of an 'Assisted Workshops' scheme agreed by the Committee, where the ALLC would advertise a willingness to provide financial assistance for such strong organisational infrastructure, but which do not conduct humanities computing. Possible schemes for financing graduate students were also discussed, and a small ALLC review panel would be formed to look at these ideas.

With regard to the proposed 'Father Busa Award', discussed last year, and involving recognition of the achievement in the application of computers to a humanistic setting, it was hoped that the first award would be made in Debrecen in 1998. It was also hoped that the first award winner would be announced at this conference, after discussions with the ACH. The award would be made every three years.

Harold Short announced that secretarial assistance would be offered to the Editor of the Journal.

Secretary: David Holmes provided both institutional and personal membership figures covering the past few years:

	1993	1994	1995	1996
Institutional	478	468	452	474
Personal	325	294	245	252

These figures, along with provisional figures for 1997, showed encouraging signs of the downward trend in membership being halted. He advised members that those elected committee members now serving and their years of re-election were:

1998: Christian Decourt, Nancy Ide, Lesa Lena Opas
1999: John Dawson, Espen Ore, Thomas Rommel
2000: Lou Burnard, Paul Fortier, Michael Sperberg-McQueen.

Gordon Dixon expressed his thanks to those with whom he had worked closely during his long position as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal. He was now stepping down, and the Meeting wished to express its sincere gratitude to Gordon for all his dedicated work on the Association's behalf. It was announced that Gordon had been awarded Honorary Membership of the Association.

Stuart Lee reported on the broadening inscope of the Journal with two special issues planned this year.

Susan Hockey informed the meeting that the 1998 conference would be held at Lajor Kossuth University, Debrecen, Hungary, from July 5th to 10th. A programme Committee had been formed.

The 1999 conference would be held at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in early June, and Cambridge University would be submitting a formal proposal to host the year 2000 conference, being the 30th anniversary of the first meeting on Literary and Linguistic Computing in the UK which led to the formation of the ALLC.

Susan Hockey thanked both the organizers and the Programme Committee of the Kingston Conference on behalf of the ALLC for all the excellent work they had put in.

Michael Sperberg-McQueen informed the meeting that the guidelines had been out of print for some time, but a re-formatted version with a few corrections had just been sent to the printers. Substantive changes would go through the Technical Review Committee. A ten year anniversary conference was being planned for mid-November.

(i) It was noted that Advanced Computing in the Humanities (ACO*HUM) was one of the Socrates/Erasmus thematic networks started in 1996 and that the ALLC is an official sponsoring organisation for this project.

(ii) Harold Short reported that the Association's World Wide Web site was not yet complete but would now be available to the membership. It would include details from past conferences. Space for e-mail addresses would also be entered into membership renewal forms.

(iii) The meeting wished to record their sincere gratitude and appreciation to Susan Hockey for all the work she had undertaken on behalf of the Association during her long period of membership. It was announced that Susan Hockey had been award Honorary Membership of the Association.