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COMPUTER SCIENCE
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21 Dupont Circle, Washington, DC
June 16, 2000
Attendees: Thomas Beebee, David Green, Gail Hawisher, Mary Ann Lyman-Hager, Elaine Martin, Worthy Martin, Stuart Moulthrop, Stephen Olsen
David Green announced that dates and location are now final for
the fall workshop: 20-24 September 2000 at the Wyndham Washington DC,
14th and M Street. The workshop will begin 7 pm Wednesday evening, 20
September, with an opening reception, dinner, and plenary speaker,
and it will end at 12:30 pm Sunday, 24 September. See
Agenda.
The committee asked that the steering committee reconsider the balance and arrangement of the field meetings and topical sessions. All agreed that scheduling four topical sessions between the Thursday and Friday field meetings would not give the field groups adequate time to discuss the topical presentations, and some committee members thought that the field groups would need more time overall to accomplish their tasks. A suggested solution was to replace the first topical session on Friday morning with an additional field meeting.
The committee agreed that the topics of these sessions should be more focussed, either on pragmatic issues (providing information about digital technologies and projects that could help field groups identify new opportunities for humanist scholars) or on contextual issues (examining the various contexts of our work [e.g., institutional, psychological, social] that should be taken into account by the field groups when designing their projects). The committee proposed the following four topics for the sessions:
Models of Electronic Publication. Suggested presenters were Marie Hansen (Project Muse Director, Johns Hopkins U Press) and Michael Jensen (Director of Publishing Technologies, National Academy Press). This session would outline the new options for publication offered by the electronic environment and provide appropriate examples for consideration, such as electronic-only publication (e.g., ACLS monograph series in History), publication both in print and online, self-publication, refereed and non-refereed, fixed text or evolving text, publication with accompanying online formats for scholarly exchange.
Digital Texts. Suggested presenters were Terry Ford (Editor of the MLA Bibliography), Matt Kirschenbaum (former managing editor of the Blake Archive, IATH, U of Virginia), and Worthy Martin (Professor of Computer Science, U of Virginia). This session would describe and consider the implications (both pro and con) of the technical requirements of digital texts, such as data structures and markup languages (XML, TEI); systems for indexing, search, and retrieval; storage and longevity of archives; data conversion; models of interactivity; reading and literacy in the electronic environment.
Intellectual Property. Suggested presenters were Howard Besser (member of the National Academies' Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure; Assoc. Prof. of Information Studies, UCLA), Bob Kolker (Professor of English and Media Studies, Georgia Inst. of Technology and U of Maryland), Stephen Mamber (Dept. of Film and Television, UCLA), and Sanford Thatcher (chair of the Copyright Committee of the Association of American University Presses; director of the Penn State Press). This session would present some of the legal, ethical, and technical issues of copyright and fair use in the electronic environment.
The Digital Divide. Suggested presenters were Cynthia Selfe (Professor and Chair of Humanities, Michigan Technological U) and Victor Villanueva (Professor and Chair of English, Washington SU). This session would consider issues of race, class, and gender and their affects on access to the electronic resources. [Note: the committee suggested that this topic be presented by one of the plenary speakers.]
The committee also identified these additional topics of interest:
It was suggested that participants at the topical sessions sit at field-mixed tables of 8 or 10 during the presentations, then remain at their tables for cross-field discussion of the topical issues; each table might also briefly report on their conversation at the end of the session.
Janet Murray as the opening speaker. She might speak on collaboration and interdisciplinarity in the electronic environment, or on the future of the book, or the future of the humanities in the electronic environment.
·Or, to have an opening speaker address the issue of the "Digital Divide" (see Topical Sessions above).
Stan Katz (president of NINCH and former president of ACLS) as the closing speaker. The committee felt that that a closing speaker made most sense if that person circulated among all the field groups during the 4-day workshop and then providing at the end a summing up of the conversations and a consideration of the future of the humanities in the electronic environment.
In light of our focus on electronic publication and dissemination, it was decided to modify the steering committee's proposed structure for workshop field meetings.
Day 1: How do we publish and disseminate our work now? How could those methods be improved?
Session 1: Discussion of questionnaire responses. All participants will be asked to read the group of Language and Literature responses in advance; with this invitation we will send the field committee's summation of the major issues identified in the responses (the field committee will expand on the initial summaries prepared by Steve Olsen and Tom Beebee).
Session 2: Discuss and prioritize the list of "problems" and "opportunities" in electronic publication and dissemination. This list will be created in advance by asking participants to create a wish list of what they would most like to see in terms of electronic publication and dissemination and what technological, institutional, psychological, or social factors currently prevent these wishes from coming true. We will also ask participants to identify one or two electronic publication projects that they think are exemplary.
The field committee agreed to meet briefly after dinner Thursday night to review the agenda in light of the first day's discussions.
Days 2 & 3: What would it take to realize the opportunities identified on day 1?
What projects does this lead us to? Participants will follow through the threads of their discussion and begin to outline possible projects.
Facilitators will need to be sensitive to the diversity of participants in terms of field of study, scholarly values, and technological literacy, and make sure that all feel welcome to voice their hopes, fears, and uncertainties. Stuart Moulthrop will facilitate the discussion on Thursday, Mary Ann Lyman-Hager on Friday, and Gail Hawisher on Saturday.
Elaine Martin and Steve Olsen will take notes during the field meetings and report on the discussion at the plenary sessions.
Designated jotter: When necessary, the facilitator will appoint
someone from the workshop to write notes on the flip chart during
discussion.
The committee discussed possible reading materials to circulate in advance to the L&L workshop participants to create a common vocabulary and frame of reference for the workshop discussions. Field committee members should circulate their additional suggestions as soon as possible and no later than 30 June: What should everyone be aware of before the workshop discussion begins? [Should we also invite the workshop participants to make suggestions?]
Suggestions so far:
The committee discussed the questionnaire responses and agreed
that they contained valuable information and perspectives; and while
coverage is incomplete, it was deemed adequate for our purposes. Tom
Beebee and Mary Ann Lyman-Hager suggested inviting additional foreign
language scholars and teachers to complete questionnaires to improve
the representation of foreign language interests. Field committee
members may want to review our original list of invited respondants
to see who did not respond; if we identify crucial perspectives that
are not represented, we may invite additional people to respond. The
committee considered again the promise of privacy made to the
questionnaire respondants and agreed that the URL for responses
should not be circulated beyond the workshop participants. Steve
Olsen will remind all workshop participants who haven't done so to
complete the questionnaire.
The committee discussed how best to motivate workshop participants
to do more than generate a "blue sky" wish list and instead
articulate focussed and fundable ideas for projects, even though they
will not be involved in the projects themselves. It was suggested
that a NINCH representative should give participants a pep talk at
the beginning of the workshop reminding them that this is a
multidisciplinary endeavor, that they were chosen for their expertise
and experience in a range of scholarly fields, and that their
conversations over the next four days will be a contribution to the
future of scholarship in the humanities.
David Green, Executive Director of NINCH, reported that the next stage of the Building Blocks project, annual conferences allowing for more sustained collaboration between humanists and computer scientists, has received its initial funding in the form of a grant of $260,000 from the Carnegie Corporation.
Respectfully,
Stephen Olsen
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BUILDING
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