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Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Committee Minutes of the ALLC Committee Meeting held at Victoria, Canada, 14-17 June 2005 Agenda
1. Attendance Harold Short (Chair), Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen (Secretary), Espen Ore, Paul Fortier, Edward Vanhoutte, Liliane Gallet-Blanchard, Alejandro Bia, Melissa Terras. Apologies: Jean Anderson (Treasurer), Laszlo Hunyadi, Elisabeth Burr, Marilyn Deegan, Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Laszlo Hunyadi, Thomas Rommel, John Nerbonne, Simon Horobin. David Robey (President) was expected to join the meeting in due course. Lorna Hughes was not attending the meeting (as she was chairing the ACH meeting) but would be available to vote. The Chair opened the meeting at 10.30. The Chair noted that Melissa Terras would be joining the Committee as Acting Secretary for 2005/6 while Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen was undertaking duties as Chair of the Programme Committee of the 2006 Conference. 2. Minutes and matters arising The minutes of the ALLC Committee Meeting 4-5 December 3005 were accepted as a true record, with one amendment: on page 6, the sentence “It was agreed that the ALLC should have dominance in the governance of the new structure” should be changed to “It was noted that the governance protocol ensures that the ALLC will have the majority of members on the steering committee”. There were no matters arising. 3. Chair’s Report The chair noted that most of his report would come up under other matters. The chair reported that the developments regarding the ADHO were important, and that the Glasgow meeting had been crucial to resolving issues regarding the ADHO protocols. The new contract with Oxford University Press was also of importance, and a draft contract made available. Due to some problems with legal matters this contract had not been signed, but the journal was expected to operate under this contract from January 2006. Subscription levels to the journal were a concern, and it was stressed that the subscription levels could be extended quite dramatically with very little effort. There was an opportunity for expansion, but the numbers were actually declining. The chair suggested a projection of possible subscription figures, and highlighted issues regarding promotional materials. At this point David Robey joined the meeting. 4. Secretary’s Report The contract and relationship with Oxford University Press was the main issue reported. Assurance has been given by OUP that information would be made available but this had not happened. A promotional leaflet was prepared, but wasn’t made available for the conference packs. The ALLC would support the Methods Conference (which Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen is helping to organise). Proffessor Goebels from Gratz, Austria, would be the ALLC sponsored plenary speaker. The conference will be sponsored by OUP, and ALLC will provide sponsorship of the reception and bursaries. A German version of the website is now available, which needs proofreading before it goes live. The next version of the website was going to be in French. It was discussed that pages were needed in other language than English. The new website will also be scripted in XML. Discussion was needed, however, on how to keep track of changes across different versions of the site. 5. Treasurer’s Report This was presented by the Chair on Jean Anderson’s behalf. Once the new journal contract was approved, it would come into operation on January 1 st 2006. The new contract means that ALLC will get 70% of the profit of the journal (at present it is 15% revenue and 50% profit. The new arrangement should mean more revenue for ALLC). When agreed and signed, the new contract will be effective retrospectively to 1 Jan 2005. The outflow of £17000 was noted from the accounts this year. This included significant one offs for the OUP contract. This was not a normal state of play. Journal income was slightly less than the previous year. Although the price had gone up, membership was down. It was stressed that membership needs to be encouraged to grow. Expenditure was noted on the annual AGM and conference, particularly the BUSA award. Mid term committee meetings remain a significant cost, with a high proportion of income being channelled into these. This should be flagged as something to address in the future. It was stressed that income levels need to be increased. It was discussed that members should be able to sign up for multiple years of subscription automatically, with the subscription paid by direct debit. However, there were problems with international credit cards, and OUP did not seem to handle automatic renewal of subscriptions very well. Therefore, OUP needed to be approached regarding this. David Robey may approach the managing director if the outcome of a meeting with Claire Morton at OUP was not acceptable. A suggestion was made by Paul Fortier that the midterm meetings could be undertaken more cheaply, however, the chair stressed that it is important for the organisation. It was agreed that a careful review of the expenditure for mid term meetings and their benefits and achievements should be carried out, to provide a publicly available account of why the meetings are important, and their costing justified. This was proposed by David Robey and seconded by Paul Fortier. Alex Bia, Jean Anderson, and Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen would carry out a benefit and cost analysis of mid-term meetings, which would be sent round for review before the next summer meeting. 6. Election of Officers The President took over the meeting from the Chair. Chair: Harold Short was nominated by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, and seconded by Paul Fortier. He was unanimously voted in. Secretary: Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen was proposed by Harold Short and seconded by Paul Fortier. She was unanimously voted in. Treasurer: Jean Anderson was proposed by Harold Short and seconded by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen. She was unanimously voted in. The Chair resumed control of the meeting.7. Election of Committee Members Alex Bia, Espen Ore and Thomas Rommel were nominated as Committee Members by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen and seconded by Paul Fortier, and voted in unanimously. Edward Vanhoutte raised the question of procedure regarding the election of Committee Members, and whether the ALLC should have a democratic voting structure, as per the constitution, where officers should be nominated and members can vote on the nominations. John Nerbonne was nominated as a Committee Member by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, and seconded by Harold Short, and voted in unanimously. David Robey raised questions of renewal and election, asking if there should be a limit on the number of times that a Committee member can be renewed on the committee. There were issues of continuation and change. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen said there should be development, and Espen Ore noted that there should be development away from purely English language group. David Robey noted that there needed to be a balance, and that we should be able to defend ourselves from the notion of being “clubby”. David Robey proposed that the procedures about electing the membership of the committee should be reviewed, and Harold Short agreed to undertake this for next summer’s meeting. The elections, above, were repeated with the presence of Lorna Hughes (ie with a quorate meeting) after a later discussion (see 9. 1), with the same outcome. 8. Communications of Association 8.1. Journal Presented by Edward Vanhoutte on behalf of Marilyn Deegan. Changes in the journal were outlined, including the redesign of the cover to include the fact that ACH is represented. Stéfan Sinclair has joined the journal board as associate editor (meaning that ACH has representation on the journal board). The contract with OUP has still not been signed, but should be in place from January onwards. The new contract changes the production scheme: there will now be a publication ahead of print service online, and a 12 week turnaround. A Digital manuscript management system will now be used: OUP have offered to pay the set up costs. OUP say that the annual fee (one of OUP’s costs, which LLC will have to pay) will be small, but there is no information regarding how much this will be. This will all bring down the production time, while will mean more issues will be possible. There will be additional special issues this year, and the amount of copy has also gone up due to changes in page layout. David Robey asked about the position of OUP on open access, and the archiving of outputs of publicly funded research, and suggested we investigate this more with OUP, to make it clear that authors can make available e-post prints. Edward Vanhoutte said that there was a change in copyright in the new contract, so articles were copyright the author, which allowed them to put up pre-prints versions of the papers. David Robey suggested that authenticated postprints were an issue worth raising again. At this point Peter Lidell, the local organiser of ACH/ALLC 2005, entered the meeting, and a discussion took place regarding the 2005 conference (see 10.1) The meeting then broke for lunch, and reconvened at 1.15 . (Peter Lidell was no longer present). Willard McCarty joined the meeting, and presented a report on Humanist, see 8.2. The chair thanked Willard McCarty for his work on Humanist. Willard McCarty left the meeting. John Unsworth joined the meeting, and a discussion took place regarding the conference in 2007 (see 10.3). The chair thanked John Unsworth for his proposal, and John Unsworth left the meeting. Discussion resumed regarding the journal after the lunch break and visitor breaks. Edward Vanhoutte raised the issue that the reviews editors had all become associate editors, but that their new role was not defined, and their duties unclear. This should be worked out at the next board meeting. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen proposed to thank Marilyn Deegan, Simon Horobin and Edward Vanhoutte for all their work this year, which was seconded by Harold Short and unanimously voted. (The following discussion about the journal took place on 17/6/05 but is listed here in order). The Chair brought up the question of subscription numbers and how to develop a strategy to improve them. Targets should be set and members should be encouraging others to join. OUP were really keen to promote the journal, although they had not sent any promotional material to the conference. Harold Short will find out why things weren’t sent to the conference. OUP should also be provided with a list of conferences and dates so that they can send promotional material to other relevant conferences. Espen Ore and Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen offered to go through Scandinavian organisations and see where they can promote LLC more in that region. Edward Vanhoutte offered the same for the Netherlands, Alejandro Bia for Spain, Liliane Gallet-Blanchard for France, and Laszlo Hunyadi would be approached to ask if he would promote the journal in Eastern Europe. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen proposed writing a covering letter in electronic format so that we could target people in a standard format. Harold Short and Melissa Terras will draft a letter which will be sent round for people to comment on. An equivalent form for sending to academic libraries will also be drafted. Students should be encouraged to approach University Libraries to ask them to stock LLC. Harold Short asked OUP for a list of lapsed members, to see who hasn’t renewed, and these members can perhaps be prompted. Prior to this, this list will be circulated to the committee (in case of death or retirement of lapsed members). Harold Short proposed the creation of a database of those who have attended and given papers at conferences, to check if they are members, and to encourage them to join. Espen Ore suggested that this was more of an ADHO job rather than that of ALLC. It was agreed that collaboration with ACH should be entered into as a means to increase membership in Europe and the Americas. Espen Ore raised the question of the data protection act and the legal requirements in the making and use a database of people’s details. Edward Vanhoutte suggested that there was a need to incorporate in the membership form an explicit request that would allow their details to be kept and used by ALLC. Paul Fortier suggested that the differential rates between conference fees for members and non members should be stressed: Liliane Gallet-Blanchard confirmed this would be made clear on next year’s conference website. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen suggested that the difference between conference rates between members and non members should be made larger, and that this would encourage non-members to join as they would get membership and the conference fee for less that the non-member conference fee. Edward Vanhoutte suggested that there could be three options: non member, member, or non-member who will join when registering for the conference: there should be a facility to do this as part of the registration procedure. Alejandro Bia asked if people could join at the conference, but Harold Short explained that the way OUP handles subscriptions would make this difficult. Harold Short also pointed out that there has never been a check of who is a member when they register, and that perhaps the person should have to put in their membership number. Alejandro Bia suggested that the newcomers could pay the local organisers to join, then the local organisers pay OUP in a batch payment. Paul Fortier suggested that extra copies of the journal could be brought to the conference for new members to take away. (End of discussion on 17/6/05). 8.2 Humanist Willard McCarty presented a report on Humanist to the committee after the lunch break (see 8.1). Humanist is maintaining a steady state, and there was further potential for analysis of the 18 year corpus of communication. He invited expressions of collaboration to realise and analyse the data and member biographies. Harold Short queried about the state of updating bibliographies, and the prospect of having a properly maintained membership database. Willard agreed that if this was accessible, members would be able to care about their details, and welcomed suggestions for software tools, ideas, and implementation for the operation of Humanist. There was some discussion about setting up an advisory board, but this had been tried before, and there was very little for them to do then. 8.3 Computing in the Humanities Working Papers The status of this initiative is that it is dormant. Espen Ore suggested it either be abandoned, or have an editor appointed. Paul Fortier asked about the relationship between the ADHO journal and CHWP as a preprint service. It was recommended that the ADHO publication committee should think about using CHWP as a preprint service, and if it is agreed, do a proper job of organising it, or let it go. There needs to be a proper procedure for mounting and unmounting papers. David Robey pointed out that it would be possible to link to the data of research papers, which could link research data and literature together. 8.4 Website Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen announced that the German version of the website was ready to launch, with the next version of the website being in French. There was discussion about the transition of the website to XML, and this will happen in due course. An Email will be sent round with a test version of the new site to invite comments. The question of which other languages should be included was raised, and an agreement reached that an introductory page with a couple of paragraphs of “blurb” be provided in as many languages as possible, but the full version of the site only be available in major languages. Edward Vanhoutte offered to write a small blurb of two paragraphs which could be used as a template for translation into other languages, and this would be passed around for comment. It is necessary to have a systematic and co-ordinated way of rolling out different versions when we have them, and it would be an important symbolic representation of the aims of the organisation. 8.5 ALLC Archive Harold Short reported that King’s have a growing archive of ALLC material, and there may be more to deposit in future from past members of the committee. There remains the question of an electronic archive. Harold Short and Melissa Terras agreed to put a proposal together for the next meeting regarding electronic archiving of material. Edward Vanhoutte raised the question of the conference report, to see if the tradition could be kept. Edward Vanhoutte would consult with Marilyn Deegan to put together a proposal for the December meeting. At this stage there was a discussion regarding the 2005 conference (see 10.1), the 2006 conference (see 10.2), and the 2007 conference (see 10.3). 9. ADHO 9.1 Governance Protocol The Chair introduced the purpose of this discussion: the hopeful ratification of the protocols, with the acceptance that there would still need to be changes in the future. The solicitor had advised she could see nothing in the governance protocol which would conflict with the constitution of the ALLC. Therefore, there was nothing against ratifying the protocols in principle, with the provision that future changes would be made. The purpose and function of the ADHO were to provide joint activities for publication and conferences with the explicit intention of delegating responsibilities, not giving up sovereignty. Therefore, the constituents would retain their identity, governance, and their right to withdraw from the alliance. At this stage Lorna Hughes joined the meeting (making the meeting quorate). After discussion, the Chair suggested the following statements: “We, the Committee of the ALLC, propose that the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO) Governance Protocol be ratified as an acceptable working document with the removal of the phrase “and the Consortium for Computing in the Humanities (COCH/COSH)”, acknowledging that it will evolve and change to take account of the mutual and separate interests of ADHO and its constituent organisations”. “We, the Committee of the ALLC, propose that the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO) Conference Protocol be ratified as an acceptable working document acknowledging that it will evolve and change to take account of the mutual and separate interests of ADHO and its constituent organisations”. It was noted that removal of COCH/COSH from the document is not taking a view on their inclusion in the alliance: it is a matter of due process. No formal procedure had been undertaken to include COCH/COSH in the alliance as yet. The acceptance of these statements was proposed by Paul Fortier, seconded by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, and voted in unanimously. At this stage, elections were repeated (see section 7) with a quorate Committee. Lorna Hughes left the meeting. 9.1 ADHO Governance Protocol Various changes to the Governance Protocol were then discussed (detailed below). Harold Short presented the present subscription list to the committee, correct of 31 st Dec 2004. Next year, better records should be presented by OUP and a clearer picture of the geographical spread of members should emerge. There was discussion regarding the membership of ALLC and ACH and how this could be made clearer, and also deal with the fact that some people are members of both. Edward Vanhoutte asked if members of the committee were morally obliged to join all associations. Harold Short gave out the draft contract with OUP. The Chair paused the meeting at 5pm. The Chair reconvened the meeting at 9.45, 15/6/05. Attendance and apologies were the same as 14/6/05. Lorna Hughes joined the meeting. Various changes to the Governance Protocol were then proposed: a. Section I, Item 3. Before “cumulative”, the word “total” should be added. b. Section II. The duties of individual officers must be spelled out in a separate item. Section 5 and section 7 should be deleted. The following should be inserted as II.1:
1. Officers of the Committee: c. Section II, Item 2. The following sentence should be added to the end of the item: “The distribution of membership of the ADHO steering committee should be reviewed and, if necessary, adjusted annually.” d. Section II, Item 4: remove “Appointments are for three years, renewable”. The point that the Editor and Treasurer are not three years posts needs redrafting. e. Section II, Item 6, fourth line: “ (for example, three out of five)” should be deleted. f. Section III, Nature and selection of ADHO constituents: Harold Short would raise the question of the removal of constituents from the alliance, whether by their own choice or by expulsion, with the solicitor. g. The point needs to be added that additional subscriptions by officers to other Adho organisations (above payments to organisations like ALLC) will be paid by ADHO. These changes were proposed by Paul Fortier, seconded by Espen Ore, and unanimously voted in. 9.2 ADHO Conference Protocol Various changes were proposed to the protocol.
A motion to ratify these changes was brought by Lena Opas-Hänninen, seconded by Espen Ore, and voted in unanimously. 9.2.1. ADHO Conference Protocol Annex Various changes were then proposed to the “Annex to the ADHO Conference Protocol”:
These changes were proposed by Lena Opas-Hänninen, seconded by Alejandro Bia, and unanimously voted in. The chair paused the meeting at 11.30am. The Chair reconvened the meeting at 2.10pm, 17/6/05. David Robey was not present, but the attendance was the same as the prior meeting apart from this. A discussion followed about the Journal, see 8.1. 9.7. ADHO Steering Committee Appointments The members on the steering committee at present are Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, Laszlo Hunyadi and Harold Short. Appointments are for 3 year terms, and therefore some turnover should be planned for. 3 people needed to be nominated for the steering committee, Laszlo Hunyadi was willing to continue for a year, Harold short for two years, and Espen Ore was nominated for a 3 year appointment. This would mean there was a rolling membership so that each year a new person could join the committee. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen suggested that Elisabeth Burr be nominated to stand after Laszlo Hunyadi stands down next year, as she has done a lot of work on drafting the documents. Harold Short recorded appreciation for Espen Ore and Elisabeth Burr for all the work that they have done on the ADHO committee. These appointments were proposed Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, seconded by Alejandro Bia, and voted in unanimously. Each association nominates one person for the conference co-ordinating committee, and Harold Short had asked Espen Ore if he would be willing to stand given his experience as both a local organizer and a program chair. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen proposed Espen Ore for this role, Alejandro Bia seconded, and it was voted in unanimously. Each association has to nominate one person for the publications committee. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen nominated Edward Vanhoutte, seconded by Espen Ore, and voted in unanimously. This appointment is provisional in the sense that the publication protocol has not been finally adopted. Names for 2007 program committee were discussed. Jean Anderson had expressed interest in being on the program committee (Jean Anderson would be asked to confirm this). In terms of continuity, Paul Fortier and Elisabeth Burr were nominated (Elisabeth Burr would be asked to confirm this). Harold proposed that Paul Spence from KCL be on the program committee, bringing both a new voice and language skills to the committee. These appointments were proposed by Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, seconded by Espen Ore, and voted in unanimously. 10. Conferences 10.1 Conference, 2005 The following discussion took place during the initial discussion of the journal (see 8.1). The chair thanked Peter Lidell for the work of the local organiser and his team. Peter Lidell reported on his view of the organisation of the conference, suggested that he had organised a lot of conferences but did not know the culture of ACH/ALLC. He recommended that a clearer time line be given to local hosts, and a better understanding of who does what within the organisations. There were some issues with the timing of the set up of the website, and he maintained that the timing for the call for papers was problematic as academics needed to know more than a year in advance when conferences would be to get funding. There was also a problem with the quality of submissions – as they were needed in XML format he suggested that submissions should be done in a coherent format, with one bibliographic style. In the case of this conference, once papers were submitted, he had a student do the markup. A white paper on the experience of his student is available detailing the problems entailed: for example, marking up the 3 paper sessions and panels was difficult, and there was no understanding of the level of granularity of the markup. He mentioned that the marked up abstracts were already being used as a corpus for courses in text analysis. The number of registrations had been budgeted for 220, hoping for 250, with a maximum of 450 spaces. The barebones budget for a conference was 180, and there were only 190 registered attendees, plus hopefully some local students and staff who would attend. Alex Bia commented that there had been 128 papers submitted, of which 71 were accepted, and also 13 panels, 7 three-paper sessions, and 26 posters. Alex Bia disagreed with Peter Lidell’s comments on the problems of timing regarding the website, and also disagreed with the need to publish the call for papers earlier. Espen Ore agreed that August or September was the usual time for calls for conference papers. Peter Lidell suggested that this was too late to make sense for academics. Harold Short said this issue was being dealt with under the new conference protocol. Alex Bia agreed that communications with the local hosts had been problematic at times. Peter Lidell left the meeting. The following discussion took place after the discussion regarding the ALLC archive (see 8.5). Harold Short congratulated and thanked Alejandro Bia on a successful conference program. Alejandro Bia reported on the points of contact with delegates: the website and conference programme. There were problems with the early version of the website, but the final website was beautiful and worked gracefully: future conference websites should copy this model. However, he suggested that the XML formatting should be left until after the reviewing process to save time, and avoid formatting dropped papers. The conference itself received the highest number of proposals so far, but the conference time itself was reduced. There was a discussion regarding whether the community should be able to submit papers already marked up in TEI with a ACH/ALLC DTD, but it was felt that this required more thought and discussion. The process of allocating reviewers to papers needed to be amended, as there were problems in allocating reviewers and reviewees. Although there are 209 reviewers in the database, only 89 accepted reviews, but some of these were tardy. It was suggested that a field could be added to the check list which established reviewers expertise, to ascertain which languages they were competent to review abstracts in (as opposed to an academic interest in the language). The 2006 conference will use the same system, at KCL, for management of submission and reviews. David Robey suggested that ADHO should be consulting with all past conference chairs to look at difficulties in the reviewing process. 10.2 2006 Liliane Gallet-Blanchard demonstrated the website for the next conference: http://www.allc-ach2006.colloques.paris-sorbonne.fr/index.htm, for comment. The website will also go up in French (it is normal that the website is presented in English and in the local language of the conference). Questions were asked about whether there would be French and English strands of the conference, but Liliane Gallet-Blanchard said that this would not be the case. There was a discussion regarding what languages people will be allowed to present in, and the possibility of having slides in languages other than English translated into English and available as handouts. However, this would require that they would have to be submitted beforehand, and many people work on their papers at the last minute. The book of abstracts should state which language the author will speak in, and abstracts should be in the language of presentation. Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen provided an outline of the conference schedule, which will be held from the 5-8 th July, with committee meetings held on the 4 th July, and an excursion on the 9 th. The conference committee was budgeting and hoping for around 300 registrations. There was a discussion regarding whether lunches should be provided as part of the conference fee at an agreed venue, and it was agreed that they would be provided in the refectory as part of the conference fee. The chair thanked Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen and Liliane Gallet-Blanchard for their work so far in organising this conference. At this point the meeting stopped for a coffee break, and resumed at 3.15pm. 10.3 2007 (This discussion took place on 14/6/05, after the discussion regarding Humanist, 8.2, but is listed here in order). In the absence of other proposals, John Unsworth is willing to host ACH/ALLC 2007 at the University of Illinois at Urbana –Champaign, which will be co-hosted by the School of Library and Information Science and the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (which will have a new building completed in 2006). Lodging will be inexpensive, and although the social program will be a challenge, there were suggestions that delegates could meet in Chicago beforehand. David Robey asked about the timing of excursions: whether at either end or in the middle of the conferences. The protocols for this would be reviewed through the ADHO conference committee. 12. Association Initiatives The Chair quickly covered some outstanding business regarding Association Initiatives. All five bursaries were granted this year, to: Gretchen Gueguen ( University of Maryland), Federico Meschini ( Tuscia University), Nicolo D'Ercole ( University of Pisa), Elena Pierazzo ( University of Pisa) and Aaron Coburn ( Middlebury College). A project support proposal had been submitted from Edward Vanhoutte and Melissa Terras. This would be considered by email once the reviews have been received. A decision should be made by September 15 th 2005. If the reviews are in before then a decision will be made more quickly. Alejandro Bia asked if it is possible for committee members to submit project support proposals, and it was confirmed that this is possible, they will just be excluded from the discussion regarding the proposal. There then followed a discussion on internationalisation, and the languages that should be accepted for conference papers. Additionally, if languages other than English are accepted, should proposers provide an abstract in English as well? Edward Vanhoutte stressed that it is important that we have a model of what languages would be acceptable. The general feeling is that English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian should be allowed at conferences, although further discussion on this is necessary. The Chair closed the meeting at 3pm. |
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