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Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Committee Minutes of Committee meeting, July 2002 Minutes of the ALLC Committee Meeting held at the University of Tübingen, Germany on Wednesday July 24th, 2002 Present: Harold Short (Chair), Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen (Secretary), Jean Anderson (Treasurer), John Dawson, Paul Fortier, Laszlo Hunyadi, David Robey, Thomas Rommel and Michael Sperberg-McQueen The Chair opened the meeting at 9.20 and conveyed Antonio Zampolli's greetings to the Committee. Zampolli will try to come to the conference later in the week. 1. Attendance Apologies for absence were received from Antonio Zampolli, Elisabeth Burr, Marilyn Deegan and Espen Ore. 2. Minutes and matters arising The minutes were accepted as a true record of the meeting in April 2002. The Chair suggested that any matters arising would be dealt with under the relevant sections of the agenda. He also suggested that the item on the agenda regarding conferences (item 9) be moved up to follow the Chair's Report. 3. Chair's report The Chair noted that the section of the Association website reserved for the Committee has recently been put into more effective use. The Archives have moved within King's College and work on them will hopefully resume in the next few weeks. Boxes of materials are still to be transported from Cambridge, from John Dawson, and Oxford, from Lou Burnard. The Chair noted that the Road Map meeting would be discussed later and thus he would not comment on it at present. Regarding the conference protocol, the Chair reported that John Unsworth had pointed out that since ACH are revising their by-laws they would also like to look at the conference protocol in that context. It was decided that Harold Short would look at the protocol with Julia Flanders (ACH). The TEI is going well but it does need to recruit more members and the Chair asked the Committee members to think about what we as an association could do to further this. The student prize, the workshop scheme and the project support scheme are now advertised on the website; the application form for the workshop scheme is also ready now. The Chair flagged the issue of multilinguality in the Association. David Robey suggested that the top level welcome page could, for example, be in many languages. It was generally agreed that subsequent pages could not reasonably be available in many languages. The Chair reported that he had spoken to John Unsworth about the issue of whether there would be ways in which the two associations could be brought closer together, i.e. to cooperate more. John Unsworth had suggested a joint working group to talk about the issues, which could include such things as standards work and digital library developments. It was suggested that we nominate two people to join such a working party and Elisabeth Burr and Espen Ore were duly nominated and elected to be our representatives. 9. Conferences [2.2002 and 4.2003: These items were discussed at this point of the proceedings, since both Wilhelm Ott and Bill Kretschmar were shortly expected elsewhere.] The Chair welcomed Wilhelm Ott to the meeting and asked him to report on the present conference. Ott thanked the Committee for asking him to attend. At that time there were 198 registered participants as follows: 121 from Europe, 68 from North America and 9 from the rest of the world. They could be broken down as follows: USA (60), Germany (44), UK (30), Canada (8), Hungary (8), Norway (8), Austria (6), Italy (6), Japan (5), Sweden (3) and a remaining 10 from a variety of countries. Of these, 65 were members and the rest non-members. Wilhelm Ott had managed to secure a large grant for the conference (Ä 12 500) and a special grant for Eastern European participants (Ä 4 500) from German sources. Laszlo Hunyadi thanked him especially for the arrangements he had made for Eastern European participants and the Committee as a whole thanked Ott for the good work he had done. The Chair then welcomed Bill Kretschmar from Athens, Georgia, who proceeded to present the 2003 conference, to be held at the Unviersity of Georgia in Athens. The registration fee is likely to be around $225. The title fo the conference, Web X: A Decade of the World Wide Web, is not intended to be restraining. The Programme Committee is due to meet later in the week and there will also be a handover session this week. The Committee thanked Bill Kretschmar for his presentation. In discussions following this it was decided that the Chair will talk to Julia Flanders (ACH) regarding the titles of the conferences and the responsibilities of the Programme Committee and the Local Organiser. 4. Secretary's report The Secretary reported on the website, which has been recently updated. However, several items are still missing from it, in particular some details of Committee members and information on Honorary members. These will be dealt with as soon as possible. The Secretary then moved on to talk about the membership. At that point, the individual membership for 2002 was at 143 persons. Approximately 2/3 of the membership is from Europe, 34 are from the US/Canada and 23 from the rest of the world. The surprising thing, however, is that there are several countries in Europe that show a much lower membership than expected. These include Norway, the Netherlands and Italy. On the other hand, there is a surprisingly large membership in Japan (13 members). It seems then that a membership drive might include may countries that have not been considered targets to date. Since the Committee meetings are a separate item on the agenda, the Secretary said she would return to the issue of the mid-year meeting at that time. 5. Treasurer's report The Treasurer was pleased to report yet again that the finances are in a healthy state. The largest expenditures in the current year have been the ALLC leaflet and the database for the journal. Our net income has been GBP 5000. The Treasurer pointed out that the accounts presented here are unaudited. They will be audited in August and the audited versions will be published in the journal and on the website. The Association VISA card application has been approved and the Treasurer is expecting to receive it soon. The Treasurer recommended and it was agreed that the accounts stay with the Scarborough Building Society. However, the accounts will be moved from the London branch where they currently are to a Glasgow branch, for ease of banking. 6. Election of Officers At this point of the meeting Paul Fortier took over the chairing of the meeting. Michael Sperberg-McQueen moved to elect Harold Short as Chair. The motion was seconded by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen and carried unanimously. David Robey moved to elect Jean Anderson Treasurer. The motion was seconded by John Dawson and carried unanimously. Harold Short moved to elect Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Secretary. The motion was seconded by Thomas Rommel and carried unanimously. Paul Fortier then relinquished the chair back to Harold Short. 7. Election of Committee Members Paul Fortier moved to re-elect the outgoing members, Espen Ore, Thomas Rommel and John Dawson. The motion was seconded by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen and carried unanimously. The issue of co-opted members was discussed and it was agreed that the issue would be discussed over email and decided so that any such members could attend the mid-year meeting. 8. Communications from the Association 1) Journal Marilyn Deegan, who was not present, had sent a report and the Committee wished to thank Marilyn again for her work. There were some concerns about the timely coming out of the journal, considering the rapid changes in the field. 9.5. Conference 2004 At this point of the meeting the Committee moved to item 9.5, since Jan-Gunnar Tingsell had been invited to both the ALLC and ACH meetings and was waiting to present his proposal. The University of Gothenburg offered to host the 2004 conference. Tingsell and his team had put together a good proposal that the Committee was happy with. However, it was recommended that he recalculate his figures for breaking even after he has more knowledge on sponsorship money. The Committee accepted the proposal unanimously. 8. Communications from the Association [cont.] 2) Humanist Willard McCarty has prepared a report on the Humanist and will put it up on the website. The Committee wished to express its appreciation for the existence of Humanist and its contribution to the field. 3) Computing in the Humanities Working Papers (CHWP) The Chair pointed out that we need to look into ways in which these could be used more efficiently. 4) Web Site There had been some complaints about the website and the url not changing as you go around the site. This is due to the fact that the service provider has a frame system and there is unfortunately little that can be done about it. 5) ALLC Archives The Chair had mentioned these earlier and so they were not discussed. 9. Conferences While many of these items had already been discussed, some comments were made on them at this point. 1) 2001 Papers from this conference are due to be published in CHUM in a special issue and the Committee wondered what the state of this was. 2) 2002 The final plenary, which was also to be an outcome of the Road Map Meeting,
was discussed at this point. David Robey asked each working group to cover the
sessions and to agree on the plenarist. He suggested that each speaker would
have 5-7 minutes to report on their subject. 3) Road Map Meeting It was discussed whether we think that we'd like to somehow publicise the
outcome of the Road Map Meeting. It was agreed that David Robey, Harold Short
and Antonio Zampolli would discuss this further and propose something at the
December meeting. 4) 2003 It was agreed that the ALLC members of the 2003 Program Committee would be Laszlo Hunyadi, Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Elisabeth Burr and Simon Horobin, provided Simon agrees. 5) 2004 It was agreed that the Program Chair for the 2004 conference would be Laszlo Hunyadi. The other members of the Program Committee will be Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Simon Horobin and Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen. 6) Conference Protocol This issue had already been discussed. 10.
Association Initiatives The Chair, being a member of the TEI Board, reported that the TEI met in Prague this year. It is going well but does need more members. The Associaiton could promote this by trying to give the TEI more visibility on our website. The Chair also asked the Committee members to give some thought to how we might promote the TEI. 2) Busa Award Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen reported that the Busa Committee has sent out final calls for nominations and these are also in each conference pack. The Committee is on schedule and expects to announce the winner in Georgia. 3) Bursaries The Treasurer reported that there were 7 applications for bursaries this year and 4 awards were made. The bursaries were awarded to Fiona Douglas, Barbara Arnold, Kjersti Berg, and Vika Zafrin. 4) Workshops The Chair reported that Edward van Houtte had indicated that he might be interested in applying for a workshop to be held in South Africa. 5) Student prize The Treasurer reported that the student prize text is now ready to be published and the scheme can be started. 6) Project support An informal application is up on the website. 7) Humanities education (ACOHUM and CHIME) The Chair reported that there is continuing activity on this front. There are hopes for EU funding for this but nothing concrete has come through as yet. Jean Anderson reported that there are many enthusiastic people involved and the scheme is to get a postgraduate degree in humanities computing that would cover many languages and many countries. 11. New Initiatives 1) Multilingual coverage, 2) Digital library developments, 3) Cultural heritage: institutions and projects The first three items were dealt with in conjunction with the Chair's Report. 4) Accreditation The Chair noted that we should pursue this matter since there are projects and institutions that would be interested in being affiliated. We do, however, need to work out a scheme for this. It was agreed that Jean Anderson will look into the matter, discussing it also with Elisabeth Burr. 12. Committee Meetings The next mid-year meeting will be in Bremen in December, either 6-8.12 or 13-15.12. 10. Other business 1) Sale of Membership list Michael Sperberg McQueen explained how the question had arisen. It was decided that we would not sell a list, but that we could put up links to other relevant conferences on our website. There was no other business. The Chair closed the meeting at 12.40 |
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