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Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing ALLC : Chair's Report Report for Committee Meeting and AGM Collaborative frameworks At the July 2002 AGM and Committee meeting a joint work group with ACH was authorised and established, to explore the possibilities for closer collaboration between the two associations and across the fields of the digital humanities more widely. The work group was set up with the membership: Elisabeth Burr (ALLC); Julia Flanders (ACH & TEI); Espen Ore (ALLC); Geoffrey Rockwell (ACH & TEI); Harold Short - Chair (ALLC & TEI); John Unsworth (ACH & TEI). A good deal of time and effort has been put in by the work group over the past months, and a series of discussion papers has been produced, along with a set of recommendations in principle. The key recommendations are:
If the respective ALLC and ACH exective committees and AGMs at the Georgia conference adopt the 'in principle' recommendations of the work group, the work group will seek auathorisation to develop the recommendations into a set of formal proposals and protocols for approval at the June 2004 meetings in Goteborg, Sweden. The work group discussion papers, and an Executive Summary containing the recommendations, may be found at: Communications The journal continues to flourish, and I should express our appreciation to the Editor and the Reviews Editors on behalf of the Committee and the Association. Membership levels remain a cause of some concern, however. We have had discussions with OUP about how to work together more effectively to ensure current members renew and new subscriptions are attracted. As previously reported, a database of conference attendees is under development, and arrangements have been made with OUP to obtain a regular electronic feed of membership data, so that action can be taken to prompt late or absent subscribers from previous years. It seems that OUP are not keen to introduce direct debit or standing order payment of subscriptions, which has long been an Association objective. Humanist continues to prosper under the guiding hand of Willard McCarty, and we express our appreciation to him for the many years of dedicated attention he has given to what is seen as a key source of information and ideas and an important forum for discussion in humanities computing. Conferences The preparations for the 2003 Conference at the University of Georgia have gone well, and a very successful conference can be anticipated. Preparations for the June 2004 conference in Göteborg are already well advanced. Laszlo Hunyadi has agreed to chair the international Program Committee. Discussions are continuing on the conference protocols. A small work group was established at the Tübingen meetings, consisting of Harold Short (ALLC) and Julia Flanders (ACH). They are working within the context of previous discussions, and of the ADHO developments, to prepare a revised protocol and associated guidelines. Association Activities & Initiatives The TEI Consortium is now well established. The level of membership subscriptions continues to be a cause for concern. Greater emphasis is to be given to the need and benefits of projects and departments joining the Consortium. One of the key opportunities provided by the proposed ADHO framework, from an ALLC perspective, is the focus it gives to long standing Association objectives to promote a multi-lingual multi-cultural agenda. The Committee meeting in Bremen in December 2002 spent considerable time in discussions over how the 2004 conference in Sweden could be used to promote this agenda. It was agreed, inter alia, that the call for papers and the conference web site would appear in a number of languages, and that papers in languages other than English would be accepted. There is nothing more important for the ALLC than pursuing this agenda with commitment and imagination.
Harold Short |
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