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COMPUTER SCIENCE & THE HUMANITIES:ACLS/NINCH
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Present: Anne Betteridge, Brenda Bickett, Sandria Freitag, Kenneth Foote, David Green, Eric Hoffman, Marilyn Lavin, Elaine Martin, Willard McCarty, Katherine McGinnis, Steve Olsen, Linda Tomko, John Unsworth, Steve Wheatley;
UPDATE ON PROJECT STRUCTURE AND FUNDING DISCUSSIONS
COMMENTS ON ROCKEFELLER PROPOSAL
NEW SUGGESTION OF ADDED PROGRAM
We opened by briefly reviewing our project structure. Also See COMMITTEES
THE COMPUTER SCIENCE & HUMANITIES STEERING COMMITTEE was established by the 1997 Roundtable on Computing and the Humanities to guide and give general oversight to the projects that emerge from that initiative. Thus, the CS&H Steering Committee guides the Building Blocks project, and resolves any policy issues presented by its implementation. It also is responsible for forging connections between Building Blocks and other projects and developments from the Roundtable.
Members of the Computer Science and Humanities Steering Committee comprise: Charles Henry, (Chair) Vice Provost and University Librarian, Rice University; Marjory Blumenthal, Executive Director, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Academies of Science, Sandria Freitag, David Green, Joan Lippincott, Associate Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, and Steven Wheatley, Director of Programs, ACLS.
Linking the Computer Science and Humanities Steering Committee with the participants in the project are the two co-directors, David Green and Sandy Freitag, as well as Steven Wheatley from ACLS. The co-directors are responsible for maintaining a good flow of information and communication, for helping the field committees organize and do their work on behalf of their fields, for fundraising and for other presentations to the larger public.
THE BUILDING BLOCKS STEERING COMMITTEE was established by the CS&H Steering Committee to develop the project from the parameters it established. The Building Blocks Steering Committee consists of two project co-directors, seven field representatives, an ACLS representative and three advisors. Its responsibilities include helping to plan the workshops, advise on the plenary sessions and assist participating societies/organizations to keep their scholar/members informed about the project and its progress.
Just as the co-directors face two directions (the two steering committees), so do the Building Blocks Steering Committee members: they are responsible for working with the participating societies (to ensure the top-down implementation that is crucial for the project's success) as well as in helping to identify and involve individual creative humanists to ensure the bottom-up infusion of insights and definitions of needs of the field.
The field committees are composed of representatives from each of the societies. In selecting their composition, the field reps on the steering committee also aim to capture a variety of voices from the field and to include at least one computer scientist.
There should be greater emphasis on teaching, especially given the greater use of computing in teaching than in research, currently. However this should also be couched in the closer relationship between research and teaching that networking encourages and the fact that the processes and results of computer-based research can be carried into the classroom. We should add a question about the research-teaching interaction to the questionnaire.
We should clarify and emphasize in all of our texts that this project is premised on the mutual interaction between humanists and computer scientists and not on the model of scientists serving humanists' needs. Computer scientists could be as interested and committed to this project as humanists. Practically we should:
Willard McCarty suggested that one way of bridging the gap between the sciences and the humanities is to stress modeling as the essential feature of applied computing. Although the distinction between a scholarly artifact and the ways we conceive or 'model' it is, of course, understood, mechanical instantiation of those conceptions is new to the humanities. Humanists new to computing need to understand the implications of modeling, particularly that no model is true--although modeling can be used to triangulate on otherwise unreachable truth. As one physicist observed, however, there is no consensus or 'model' of modeling in science, though scientists knowingly engage in it daily. Modeling therefore is a fruitful common subject -- scientists on the one side well practiced in it, humanists on the other with highly challenging phenomena to model and a new set of perspectives from which to consider the results.
It was suggested we consider adding to this project an extended workshop-forum between humanists, scientists and information technologists with a focus on actual work in progress. There was a need for an extended workshop modeled on the annual summer workshops conducted by the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (CETH) between 1991 and 1996. We might consider such a pre-conference workshop; more practically, we could explore this approach in a topical session at the first workshops. Re-inventing a full-blown CETH summer seminar was currently out of the bounds of this project, but the potential could be explored more fully through the conference series and/or as an outcome of that project.
To recap, the functions of the questionnaire included:
The agenda of each workshop could be generated from the questionnaire results. The field committees could use the results (raw and processed) to create discussion topics and frameworks within the 3-day time period of the workshops.
Workshops would be simultaneous but, as discussed at the previous meeting in May, there would be other cross-field topic discussions: and questionnaire results should also help in generating topics and material for these discussions.
Work on more detailed content of the workshops could be a significant part of the agenda of the next Steering Committee meeting, including how questionnaire results generate agendas.
We rehearsed our need for working with a professional who could advise us on how to get the most productive and useful results from our set of initial questions. We emphasized that the questionnaire will continue to be shaped by us, and that the professional we engage is advising us, not delivering a "finished" project. Policy questions regarding use of the responses by such a consultant will need to be taken to the Steering Committee for Computing and the Humanities. To fulfill the requirements of NSF's proposal guidelines, we provided information on Carole Palmer, the UIUC information scientist who was working along a remarkably parallel track. Final arrangements, however, are still pending: she has submitted the enclosed outline of proposed work. Comments are invited.
All Steering Committee members were invited to complete the questionnaire as a way of testing it. Marilyn Lavin has submitted her responses, included here.
In addition to an the questions already mentioned, on the relationship between participants' research and teaching, it was suggested we add a direct question asking what participants greatest frustrations and greatest needs are: "what would you really like to be able to do but currently can't?"
Herewith our current understanding of the makeup of the Field Committees--but see Committees for most recent updated list.
I hope we can all update one another when a field committee representative is confirmed. I'll keep the running, updated list on the Website - and announce confirmations as they come in. If no individual has been confirmed I have just indicated the societies to be represented.
- Lindy Biggs, (Society of History of Technology) chair
- American Historical Association
- Economic History Association
- History of Science Society
- Organization of American Historians
- Brenda Bickett & Anne Betteridge (Middle Eastern Studies Association), chairs
- American Studies Association
- American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
- Renaissance Society of America
- Elaine Martin (American Comparative Literature Association) and Steve Olsen (Modern Language Association) co-chairs
- Thomas O. Beebee, Comparative Literature, Pennsylvania State University
- Gail Hawisher, Professor of English, U of Illinois, Urbana
- Mary Ann Lyman-Hager, Director, National Language Resource Center, San Diego
- Katherine McGinnis/Linda Tomko chairs, Society of Dance History Scholars
- Frank Hildy, American Society for Theatre Research
- Gary Maciag, Association for Theatre in Higher Education
- Kate Van Winkle, Society for American Music
- William Keller, computer scientist, Society for American Music
- American Musicological Society
- Eric Hoffman (American Philosophical Association) with Ken Foote and Larry Hindman, chairs
- Tim Bryson, American Academy of Religion
- Jill Watson, American Society for International law
- Kenneth Foote (Association of American Geographers): negotiating for new rep.
- American Anthropoliogical Society
- Society for Ethnomusicology
- Marilyn Lavin (College Arts Association): negotiating for new rep.
- Bob Kolker, Society for Cinema Studies
- Visual Resources Association