Comments on Reports and Agenda of ACH Exec Meeting - June 2005

Herewith some brief comments submitted on various agenda items. I give my apologies again for not being able to attend this year's conference.

* 2004 Actions: We should be careful to avoid planning blight as a result of the Adho development (e.g. ACH still needs to take the initiative with funding new activities which are ACH specific; we need to continue to be proactive in attracting members to ACH etc as well as developing ACH's web presence).

• (JohnUnsworth - June 11, 2005): definitely

* Membership: There is perhaps a perceived gap between the ACH Council and its members, especially between conferences. We should do more to get to know our members, e.g. by openly calling for (self-)nominations to the Council, various committees (including ADHO) as positions arise. New members to ACH should have a clear idea of how they can serve and participate in developing the ACH.

• (StefanSinclair - June 11, 2005): I have mixed feelings about self-nominations, but I really like the idea of a call for nominations of others

* Humanist: I agree with Willard's call that Humanist is used frequently and consistently by ACH (and ALLC). However, at various meetings in the past I thought we had agreed to an ACH Members email list.

• (JohnUnsworth - June 11, 2005): I think that was only intended for things like distributing calls for nominations, perhaps conducting elections, and perhaps also reminding people to re-up LLC subscriptions/membership. That sort of list would be useful, but a list that duplicates the functionality or purpose of Humanist would be counterproductive, I think.
• (MichaelFraser - June 11, 2005): I agree on this point. In the initial version of my comments the last sentence relating to Humanist was followed by the sentences relating to 'getting know our members better' (i.e. being able to conduct all the matters you list above).

* ADHO Governance: I broadly support the ADHO Governance Protocol. I think we need to ensure a distinction is maintained between appropriate activities at the ADHO level and those which the constituent parts can simply initiate and get on with without reference to the ADHO Steering Committee (on which, of course, ACH is a minority voting player -- anoher reason why membership activities relating to ACH alone are important). As a European I believe in the principle of subsidiarity...

• (JohnUnsworth - June 11, 2005): hear, hear
• (StephenRamsay - June 11, 2005): I too support the Governance Protocol. I also agree with Michael that the distinction between the role of the ADHO Steering Committee and that of the Councils for the constituent organizations is critical, for the reasons he outlines above. Michael, as a European, suggests subsidiarity. Might I, at my peril, suggest that we borrow a page from the tenth amendement to the U.S. Constitution: "The powers not explicitly delegated to the Steering Committee by this Governance Protocol, nor prohibited by it to the bylaws of its member organizations, are reserved to the Executive Councils respectively, or to the members of the affiliate organizations."

* ADHO Conference: I have some concern that the proposed name of the ADHO annual conference, "Digital Humanities [Year]" will cause confusion with the annual (and also international) conference, "Digital Resources for the Humanities [Year]". I am no longer a member of the DRH Standing Committee but I would be interested to know what the opinion of that committee might be on this proposal. I am assuming that since languages are not mentioned that it remains up to any given PC to decide in what languages proposals may be submitted and presented? This is a position with which I would agree (though it would good to have it stated as such).

• (JohnUnsworth - June 11, 2005): Perhaps the possibility of a conflict could be mitigated by inviting DRH to affiliate in some way. We could talk about this in the ADHO SC if there were enthusiasm for the idea. After all, the purpose of ADHO is to pull together the many related activities in our field and make them mutually reinforcing. We could probably host conference reviewing and conference program web services (since we'll be mounting that sort of thing for ADHO conferences anyway), and virtual- host www.drh.org.uk, perhaps in exchange for a modest discount on registration to members of ADHO associations? Papers from DRH are already published in LLC (as of 2004), so it would make sense to coordinate at the ADHO level.
• (MichaelFraser - June 11, 2005): Yes, the possibility of affiliation between DRH and (now) ADHO was raised sometime ago. I wrote on behalf of DRH to Lorna and Harold but at that time it was (perhaps obviously) too early to consider it. I am sure DRH would be happy to discuss affiliation again (and Jean Anderson is the current Chair of the Standing Committee -- whom I am sure would be happy to have it disscussed by the ADHO SC). As I am sure most people are aware DRH is a committee rather than an association and, as such, holds no funds nor has anything like a constitution beyond a simple protocol (http://www.drh.org.uk/drhprotocol-0410.html). So, as far as ADHO is concerned, presumably DRH would be affiliated under III.4 in the proposed ADHO Protocol.
• (JohnUnsworth - June 11, 2005): multilinguality is a principle of adho, and I'm sure that the recent tradition of translating the call for papers into multiple languages will continue, and we'll probably review papers in languages other than english as well.

* Online Publication: I welcome the decision to launch a new peer-reviewed, freely available online journal. This is something which we agreed ACH was in a good position to provide a lead on. If the 'publisher' is to be ADHO then I think careful consideration needs to be given to the editorial board. In order to attract submissions authors will need to be assured about the journal's quality and standing. Even if the editorial (or advisory?) board includes a significant number of great and good people who actually do little active work, then this may still mitigate any disadvantage to not being the imprint of a great and good (not necessarily in a moral sense) publisher like OUP. Can we consider a prominent humanities 'champion' as patron?

I welcome the emphasis on multi-lingual and innovative publications. I think the themes could be further expanded to include, for example, cyberinfrastructure (or humanities e-research) and advanced methodologies (but perhaps both these are contained within the catch-all 'humanities computing'). I would also be happy to discuss how content from a service like Humbul could be exposed through the journal (e.g. as part of the review of web sites, further links etc).

I would hope that the articles would be exposed as OAI metadata records for harvesting (i.e. conformance with the open archives initiative protocol and therefore technically as well as culturally 'open access'). I would encourage consideration of Creative Commons for licensing published articles.

What's missing from the prospectus is a budget...

Did Geoffrey Rockwell get any volunteers to participate in the journal from his call to humanist on 5 April? I would be happy to participate further in developing the journal.

Can I also ask what happened to the plan to include ACH Exec (or at least more ACH representation) on the editorial board of LLC?

• (StefanSinclair - June 11, 2005): I'm not sure of all that's happened for the editorial board, but I now seem to find myself as an associate editor of LLC (accompanied by a promise - that I keep in a secure location - that the workload will be relatively light).

* ACH web site: I agree with updating the site, especially to attract new member and enable existing ACH members to contribute content. We should aim to be as cutting-edge in our use of internet technologies as is possible within our resource constraints...

Hope it's a good meeting and a great conference!

Best wishes, Mike