Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Committee Minutes of the ALLC Committee Meeting held at Loch Lomond, Scotland, December 4-5 2004 Agenda Attendance Minutes and Matters arising Chair’s Report Secretary’s Report Treasurer’s Report Communications of the Association Conferences The Zampolli memorials Associaiton Initiatives TEI Busa Award Bursaries Workshops Student prize Journal General ADHO/IFDISH/ICHIO Introductory discussion Organisational structure and governance The Chair called the meeting to order at 9.20. He welcomed everyone and thanked Jean Anderson for organising the meeting. 1. Attendance Apologies for absence were received from Michael Sperberg-McQueen. Concha Sanz-Miguel had resigned from the Committee, saying she was too busy and felt her lack of English prevented her from taking part in the discussions. A discussion ensued regarding a Committee information pack for new members. A more serious issue is the need to consider other cultures in the reviewing process for the conferences. Concha’s resignation was accepted, but Harold Short, Alejandro Bia and Elisabeth Burr were charged with speaking to her to ascertain that her resignation was not just due to linguistic problems. The Chair then moved to item 5. 5. Treasurer’s Report The Treasurer distributed a photocopy of the Statement of Account. She will move 50 000 GBP to another account for a slightly larger percent. 3. Chair’s Report Most of what the Chair wanted to report on would come up under other matters. He pointed out, however, that this is an opportunity to see what the other parts of the world can offer and to try to draw them in to the Association. AT present in the UK the AHRB is putting in 3.5 mill. pounds on ICT in humanities research. David Robey reported on the programme. The basic idea is to develop a strategy and to develop capacity (resources and support systems). 4. Secretary’s Report The Secretary reported that she had visited OUP and met with Duncan Humphrey, who had assured her that she would receive quarterly membership files from OUP. They had also discussed the publicity material for the journal and the Association, ie leaflet, membership subscription form, bookmarks, pens, etc. In all, it had been a very fruitful meeting. The Secretary also reported on the progress regarding the support for the workshop on computational dialectometry at the Methods Conference, to be held in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada in August 2005. The OUP had agreed to sponsor the reception and the agreement was that the ALLC sponsor one quarter of the reception and OUP three-quarters. The Association would also give two bursaries to young scholars presenting at the workshop. Finally, the agreement was to sponsor a speaker to the workshop, who had now been turned into a plenary speaker at the conference. The Secretary will attend the conference and display publicity materials for both the Association and OUP, welcome the delegates to the reception and present the bursaries. Finally, the Secretary reported that she and the Treasurer had now identified the pages of the website to be translated into other languages and engaged a translator for German. When this has been completed and we see the results, she will move on to French. 2. Minutes and matters arising It was agreed that important papers should not have to be tabled. Therefore, we need reminders in advance of the Committee meeting to look at all important documents. The Chair then moved back to item 1, Attendance. John Nerbonne was co-opted as a member of the Committee. It was also agreed that the two Assistant Editors of LLC, Simon Horobin and Edward Vanhoutte, would be invited to Committee meetings. 6. Communications of the Association a) Humanist. This is still going strong. b) CHWP. Nothing to report. c) A new website type is being tested. A note will be sent out to the Committee to look at it. d) ALLC Archives. There is still quite a bit of material in Oxford. £3000 pounds were set aside previously already for post-graduate student effort. Another issue is the archiving of electronic material. 7. Conferences 2004: The papers are with OUP. The Committee congratulates the editors, Espen Ore and Laszlo Hunyadi. 2005: Alejandro Bia reported that there were 179 submissions; 11 in Spanish, 4 in French, 2 in German and the rest in English. There are about 100 reviewers. There has been a slight problem with the review system, but it is fixed. There will probably be 4 parallel tracks. It was agreed that the list of reviewers would be sent to the Committee, who could then suggest more reviewers. It will also be sent to Marilyn Deegan, Simon Horobin and Edward Vanhoutte for cross-reference. A lengthy discussion ensued on abstract that had been written by people coming from very different cultures from the Anglo-American one. Another issue is the language ability of the reviewers; Alejandro Bia said he had had trouble with reviewers of languages other than English and had not known even that some ommittee members would be able to review in other languages. It was suggested that some simple additions should be made to the database system. Another issue was the problem of abstracts that show promise but are not totally acceptable as they stand. The issue of possible mentoring was discussed. Lorna Hughes reported that it is looking as if there will be up to 25 graduate student bursaries, including the ALLC ones. She has been in contact with Peter Liddell and everything is going smoothly. Alejandro and Lorna will visit Victoria. At this point Edward Vanhoutte joined the meeting. The issue of presentations in languages other than English was discussed and the feeling was that they should have slides in English. Posters and papers have been reviewed in the same way and have equal status in this respect. The issue of the poster prize was discussed and the general feeling was that everyone at the conference should be allowed to vote. The Committee thanked Alejandro and the Programme Committee for the work they have done so far. The Chair welcomed Edward Vanhoutte. 2006: Liliane Gallet-Blanchard gave a presentation on Paris for the 2006 conference. The dates that they were proposing were 5-8.7.2006. The relevant websites are: www.paris4.sorbonne.fr www.cati.paris4.sorbonne.fr Paris was unanimously accepted for 2006. The Committee meetings will be on the 4 th and thus the dates are 4-8.7.2006. The excursion(s) will be at the beginning or the end of the conference. 8. The Zampolli memorials King’s will put together web pages on this for the Committee to look at. There was also a discussion on the idea of a Zampolli Award and its relation to the Busa Award. The minutes of the Committee meeting in Heviz said that we would contact the ACH regarding the setting up of an Antonio Zampolli Award and rephrasing the Busa Award. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen and Michael Sperberg-McQueen were to represent us on this matter. It was now agreed that they would be replaced by Espen Ore and Harold Short, Espen having been on both Busa Committees and Harold having set up the original Busa Award. 9. Associaiton Initiatives 9.1. TEI Nothing to report. 9.2. Busa Award The Busa Award Committee for 2007 is Lorna Hughes (Chair), Espen Ore, Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, Steven Ramsay and Stefan Sinclair. 9.3. Bursaries There were many applications for bursaries, which is good. 9.4. Workshops There were three workshops in sight. One at the Methods conference (Lisa Lena will organise), another one in South Africa (Harold will organise) and one in Sarajevo (Marilyn will organise). 9.5. Student prize We need to look at who to target. 9.6-11 Harold Short can commit some resources for 2 graduate students to look at these issues. Marilyn Deegan will supervise the joining of several files into one file of reviewers. There are some things regarding multilinguality and the TEI that can be done. We should also promote the idea that projects should be TEI members for the duration of the project. 10. Journal Marilyn Deegan reported that her discussion would fall into three parts: general issues, the inclusion of ACH in the Editorial Board and the new contract. 10.1 General We are 6 weeks early with the journal. This is because OUP have changed the lead-in time. There will also be a publish before print, ie papers will be on the website before printing. However, the breaking up of the link with Kluwer has created a small problem. The whole of next year is committed already. We need to do 5 issues this year and we need to look into the idea of 5 issues a year. But we shouldn’t be paying for them every time. Marilyn will also talk to OUP about 20 th anniversary publicity materials and get back to the Committee on that. We are moving to online submissions. Marilyn proposed: 1) that Simon Horobin and Edward Vanhoutte become Associate Editors. 2) that we look for one Associate Editor from among the ACH 3) that the ACH Board also be on the journal Editorial Board. These were all agreed. There was a meeting in August with OUP regarding the new contract. OUP have given their revised contract last week and it is now with our lawyer, Fiona Campbell. When the contract has been returned by Fiona Campbell, it will be sent round to the Committee. Journal renewal slips should be arriving shortly. Everyone should make sure the sum is correct since there have already been some problems. Marilyn Deegan has spare copies of back issues and offered to send some to whoever needed them. In the UK the results of publicly funded research have to be made available to the public. 75% of the UK journals have allowed this, but OUP doesn’t. Marilyn should raise this issue with Fiona Campbell and it must be sorted out. Alejandro Bia suggested that the conference fee could include a subscription to the journal. Liliane Gallet-Blanchard and Jean Anderson will discuss this and see if there is a practical way of solving this. It was proposed and seconded that everyone should take care to read the documents and bring them with them to the meetings. 11. ADHO/IFDISH/ICHIO The Committee discussed what was decided at Göteborg. This Committee noted that we discussed the idea of COSH/COCH and other organisations (eg DRH) and look at them as affiliated organisations rather than chapters. Paul Fortier moved to accept the minutes of the Committee meeting in Göteborg. Elisabeth Burr seconded and they were unanimously accepted. 11.2 Organisational structure and governance Harold Short has discussed this with Fiona Campbell and there are three basic options: 1) a memorandum of understanding, ie a document setting out how ALLC and ACH will collaborate. This is by far the quickest way of doing this. 2) create a new charity. The UK has the least arduous requirements of creating one, but it would still need a constitution and this is a crucial element in it. 3) set up a limited company. This would cover any activities that could become profit-making. The Committee discussed this and came to the conclusion that the idea of the memorandum was probably the best one, but that we need to come back to this issue. The issue of the Trustees of the Association was discussed and it was agreed that Harold Short will get in touch with the Charities Commission and name the whole Committee as Trustees. Harold Short pointed out that the documents distributed to the Committee were the starting points for discussion, not firm proposals. It was also noted that we must come back to II.2 regarding institutional subscriptions. It was also noted that those paying by UK credit card for the journal subscription at least were not able to choose membership of organisation. A case in point was David Robey. The meeting adjourned at 18.20. The Chair called the meeting to order at 9.15. He began by noting that the general sense is that the Committee has a shared vision, but that we need to see how we can put it to work. The main areas of envisioned cooperation were publications operations (the journal and electronic publications) and conferences. It was noted that the governance protocol ensures that the ALLC will have a majority of Steering Committee members for the foreseeable future. The Committee thanked Marilyn Deegan, Simon Horobin and Edward Vanhoutte for all their work so far. Marilyn Deegan pointed out that the Editor of the journal should be on the Steering Committee of the IFDISH. The possibility of a book series had been discussed by the publications committee and they had spoken to Blackwell’s but were turned down. There are two models for the new umbrella organisation: a centralised organisation and a federal model. We need to check whether we need any English members on the Committee. A very lengthy discussion on the issue ensued and there were many different viewpoints. The general consensus was to start with what we have and work from there. A Federal, flexible model seemed the best option. Affiliation would be to local organisation or the umbrella, eg CliP and ICLA might be associated to ALLC. Changes proposed to the governance document were discussed and minuted separately. They would be sent to the Committee members after the Committee meeting had finished. Comments on the conference protocols were to be sent to Harold Short within two weeks, who would then send a revised version back to the Committee within a week. In mid-January we would then know whether we have consensus. In January we should look at the publications protocol, aiming to have it ready by mid-February. The Chair then noted that in the minutes of the Göteborg meeting 10.3. 2006 conference, Simon Horobin had been elected to the Programme Committee. He wished to be replaced by Edward Vanhoutte and this was agreed. The issue of the 2006 conference and the PC Chair was then discussed. It was agreed that Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen would Chair the Programme Committee. We would appoint an assistant secretary for one year to help her with the Secretary’s matters. The next Committee meeting will be held in Oslo the first weekend in December and hosted by Espen Ore. At this point the meeting was no longer quorate. It will be proposed to the Committee that Elisabeth Burr be elected to the 2006 Programme Committee. The issue of the payment to the ACH will be discussed by email. The meeting was adjourned at noon.

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