• review of last year's action items (if there are items arising from this review to add to the meeting agenda, this would be the point to identify those)
• circulate reports: financial, membership, jobs, web, MLA, Humanist, DHQ, LLC
• EC members review minutes from last year ( summer and winter)
• new EC members review the bylaws if they haven't already

Meeting starts at 9:30 in HU206.

1. Procedural

• Present: Willard McCarty, Claire Warwick, Gary Shawver, Paul Caton, Elli Mylonas, Stéfan Sinclair, Neil Fraistat, Dot Porter, Bethany Nowviskie, John Unsworth, Chuck Bush, Matt Jockers, John Walsh
• Action Items from Summer/Fall still to be done:
  • For the future: is October 1 too early to get a nomination list together? It's in the bylaws, we're not at liberty to change it.
    • [✔] ACTION Nominations Committee to discuss this issue in the annual report
  • [✔] ACTION Susan to provide an institutional memory document for future chair of nominations committee; perhaps draft guidelines after annual meeting
• approval of the minutes from previous meeting ( summer and winter):
  • [✔] MOTION Approved: Stéfan; Second: Neil; Approved.
• approval of the agenda: Approved.

2. Ray Siemens: Report on Digital Humanities Summer Institute

• Travel bursaries: $4000 past two years; apply for matching funding
  • 2008: Funded six students
  • 100 total attendees, only 17 returns
  • Request for continuing support (see approval under point 5 "Business" below).

3. Committee appointments

• nominations (4 people)
  • Julia, Neil, Paul, John Lavagino (chair), Chuck (ex officio)
• jobs (flexible; confirm the chair and recruit volunteers)
  • Matt Zimmerman (chair), Stéfan, Bethany, (non-exec) James Cummings, (non-exec) Jennifer Edmund.
• ADHO awards committee (3 people)
  • The ADHO Awards Committee Draft Protocols are visible and need to be approved: http://www.cch.kcl.ac.uk/tmp/adhoawards/
  • The following awards are currently specified: Busa (every three years), Zampoli (every three years), ADHO bursaries (every year), Fortier Student prize (selected from among the bursaries) (every year)
  • The committee members hold staggered appointments; each member serves a 3 year term, one member rotates off every year, one's main responsibility is in their last year
  • Good to have people on this committee who are also on the Program Committee
    • [✔] MOTION: Accept Awards Committee protocol; Matt J.; John U. second
  • The following award amounts are proposed: Busa: 1500GBP; Zampoli: 1000GBP; Fortier: 500GBP (best of bursaries); bursaries: (expenses)
    • [✔]MOTION: Accept; Gary; Matt J.. second
  • Matt J. (3 years); Chuck (2 years); Claire (1 year)
• ADHO steering committee rep (1 person; incumbent is Chuck Bush)
  • Chuck
  • Julia (voting member)
  • Melissa (membership services coordinator)
• ADHO multilingualism committee rep (1 person)
  • Natasha
• Program committee for the 2010 conference (3 people)
  • ?Brett Barney (chair)
  • Matt Kirschenbaum
  • John W.
  • Dot
• Publications committee:
  • Gary
  • Elli (as ACH webmaster)
  • (note after the fact: Julia is also on this committee as DHQ editor, and Willard is on it as Humanist editor)
• Conference coordinating committee
  • John U. (Chair)
  • Gary
• All committee appointments approved.
  

4. Strategic planning

• Membership
  
  • Outreach: See New projects below
• Publications (DHQ, Humanist, ACH web, LLC)
  • Marilyn (LLC Editor) (http://www.cch.kcl.ac.uk/tmp/allccom0806/)
    • Copy: unsolicited copy is slow coming in (18 this year, as of June)
    • Generally strongly international
    • Discussion among publications – how to solicit unsolicited papers. Maybe more people are publishing in topical (non digital) journals?
    • Focus of journal: How should be directed – matter for ADHO publications committee
    • Two cases of plagiarism (one obvious, one not)
    • Complete back copies of pre-LLC ALLC publications (pre-1986), to be digitized this year
  • Trish (OUP Representative) (printed report)
    • Decline in institutional circulation, increase in consortia circulation
    • PDF more popular (HTML only available in past couple of years)
      • Marketing
        • E-TOC: email when online issue posted (c. 1500 registrants,19% increase from May 2007)
        • Online sample copy
        • LLC presence at conferences/meetings
      • General: readership international and broad, increased readership over the past year.
  • Julia (DHQ) ( http://www.digitalhumanities.org/view/AchExec/DHQ2008Report)
    • Challenges: Throughput, internal workflow for encoding and post-review interaction with authors – cause of some delays
    • Several special issues: half or more of submissions as part of special issues this year; situation-specific publishing. Possible reasons:
      • Quick turn-around
      • Support of DHQ from the organizers of these events
    • Would like to be seen as a regular publication venue rather as place only for special issues
    • Policy of “watchful caution” – encourage regular submissions this year
    • Financial: well-resourced (see spreadsheet from report for details)
      • This year – build bibliographic system
      • NEH Start-up grant for tools for using/analyzing journal content
  • Discussion of Special Issue issue:
    • Marilyn:
      • Special issues work well in the digital humanities; people like them.
      • Encourage development of conference proceedings in order to record good work
    • Willard:
      • Special issues ust be crafted by the guest editor
      • Acknowledge the value of conference proceedings, “gift to the future”
      • Series of special issues parallel to regular articles? Separate workflow?
    • Julia:
      • DHQ Annex – peer-reviewed separately, under complete control of guest editors (reviewing, coding), but available in DHQ system; doesn’t get DHQ imprimatur
    • Encourage DHQ to do this as an experiment (Willard); concerned about “doesn’t get DHQ imprimatur” (Marilyn); may not turn out to be different from quality of “regular” issues in practice (Julia)
  • Willard (Humanist)
    • 21 years
    • More growth this year than ever before – largest number of members, 1651
    • Issues: Spam, formatting messages, different alphabets – 800-1000 spam messages a day
      • Progress being made on rewriting Humanist backend
      • Being moved to ADHO server
      • Expectation: Will be running off new server with new software by September 2008
        
  • Elli (ACH Website) ( http://digitalhumanities.org/view/AchExec/2008WebReport)
    
    • See report for details & budget
    • Need new look and new content
    • Designer and student labor lined up
    • Discussion needed among others using the same system to take advantage of a common set of tools
      • Wordpress
      • Twiki
      • PHP pages
      • Cocoon
      • Drupal
    • Elli and Dot: post-meeting discussion what lives on wiki vs. website and who has access to what
    • Web/Information committee
      • Intersect with ADHO Publications committee, membership committee, jobs committee
      • Elli, Dot, Matt J., John L., Stéfan
  • Discussion
    • How to reach out to people who work in related fields
      • RSS feed from ADHO website and Humanist
      • Jobs database emails
      • Send materials to other conferences
      • YouTube for video
      • Mirror of or supplement to Humanist?
      • 2 functions: Announcement and Discussion, differentiate between them
• Jobs/mentoring
  
  • See New projects below
    
• New projects: briefly identify projects for the coming year, to be taken up in more detail in email discussion. Identify a person who will sponsor or take the lead on each project.
  • [✔] ACTION (John U., Stéfan, Gary, Matt J., Alan, Elli) follow-up on ADHO discussions of archiving conference abstracts and Humanist
    • Stéfan has been working on Humanist archive and access
    • Stéfan will take short-term ownership of this; talk to Publication committee.
  • Integration of Publications (Classics of Humanities Computing)
    • Willard: collecting historical materials (1949-1969), all online but not advertised, “security by obscurity”
      • Need: systematic approach to rights owners to open this resource up
  • Publications:
    
    • Digital humanities-wide bibliography
    • Newsletter – would need someone to compile
    • Downloadable flier to be posted on ACH website
    • Production of white papers to explore the state of the field
    • Edited issue along with MLA (similar to TEI issue)
    • Blackwells Companions (parallel to Digital Humanities and Digital Literature); MLA is also very receptive
  • Outreach/Recruitment (general):
    
    • More outreach via ACH membership mailing list – would this be useful?
    • Individuals need to be better missionaries
    • Send representatives to related conferences
    • Regional (joint) one-day symposia (30-40 people)
    • Constant prompting/reminder to communicate; have colleagues who present digital work act as missionaries at their conferences
    • Special fund for conference outreach – funding for individual to represent ACH session at other conferences
    • Individual ACH members as visiting speakers to Universities to reach out to potential members (potential grants to help support this)
    • Post more ACH-related announcements on Humanist to reach a broader audience
      
  • Outreach/Recruitment (student):
    • We need a focus on Student/Graduate Student recruitment
    • Special pre-day of DH conference for students/young scholars – not ghettoized (similar to Doctoral Consortium @ ACM). Young people give papers and audience gives constructive feedback (rehearsal).
      • More students can attend conference
      • ACH could provide grants
  • Working with/using other groups:
    • Activities as outreach – seek to sponsor ACH sessions at other conferences, invite other scholars to participate in our conference
    • Disciplinary representatives: history, literature, geography, art, music, gaming, HCI, etc. Make the relationships dynamic.
      • Phone conference with some of these people, get the leaders invested
      • Plenary addresses of ADHO conferences
    • Infiltrate other organizations and lobby: Identify upcoming conferences and sponsor sessions
    • Digital Library representation: DLF, ALA, ASIS&T
  • Distinguish between getting new people vs. satisfying existing members
  • Drupal module for jobs database
  • Build an endowment to earn interest
  • From all of these: recordings, announcements, etc.

5. Business

• Financial report and review of specific budget allocations from last year (e.g. towards bursaries, committees, etc.). (see report for details)
  • Balance: $44K plus; $8000 bursaries, $6000 DHQ, anticipate 7000GBP income
  • Remaining expenditures (complicated IRS matters):
    • Don’t give money to individuals!
  • We lose money in conversion from dollars to pounds
  • To spend: no remaining expenditures this year. Next known expenditure: first of next year to DHQ
  • New allocations for this year:
    • Drinks for Jobs reception for 20. Use budget allocated last year.
    • Web site redesign $3200
    • DHSI: Continue support from previous years $4000
  • [✔] Motion to Approve new allocations: Paul; Stéfan Seconds; Approved
• Report from the ADHO rep, and discussion of any questions or issues that come to us from the ADHO steering committee
  • Admission of new organizations to ADHO
    • http://www.cch.kcl.ac.uk/tmp/adhosc0806/adho-admissions-protocol-0806.html
    • Two levels: Constituent Organizations (formal agreement) and Affiliated Organizations (less formal)
    • Unanimous approval required: no divorce proceedings, new admissions affect all ADHO members
    • Number of representatives based on income dispersal; each CO has at least one representative to ADHO
    • John L: Concern about lack of divorce proceedings
      • Need bi-directional agreement - ADHO can kick out CO/AO; CO/AO can leave
      • John U. will bring this concern to the ADHO steering committee
    • [✔] MOTION to Approve: Matt J.; Paul second; Approved.
  • Peer review issue for DH conference submissions: Single blind, reviewers know identity of submitters, but submitters don’t know who are the reviewers
    • Some reviewers are insisting on double-blind reviewing
    • Double-blind reviewing is more respectable to deans etc.
    • Double-blind didn’t work before – bias in favor of well-known scholars
    • Would need rules for anonymozation in submitted abstracts
    • Need proper reviewer guidelines
    • Poll community to ask about value of various types of review?
    • [✔] ACTION: Chuck will take our concerns to ADHO

6. Mid-Year Meetings

• November 2007 meeting worked well
• Give us a way to check in and resolve/settle questions that come up between Summer meetings
• Spread the workload during the year
• One Fall, one Spring (in preparation of Summer meeting)
• Would need to have a quorum in order to vote
• Julia can make the decision regarding mid-year meetings herself (no reason to vote to approve)
  

7. Change bylaws for self-nominations

Suggested language:

“At some time before 1 October the Nominating Committee shall transmit to the Executive Secretary nominations of at least double the number of positions that shall become vacant on the Executive Council at the next election. Care shall be taken by the Nominating Committee to see that suitable candidates are selected from persons who are (or are willing to become) ACH members in good standing and represent as wide a variety of disciplines as possible. The nominations committee may invite suggestions from the membership of the Association (via email, Humanist, etc.). The nominations committee should, in general, respect the will of the membership, but the committee may also exercise its discretion about pursuing suggested nominees.”

• ACH Exec had voted on this via email in January-February 2008; was approved
  • [✔] Motion: Suspend prior vote, ask nominating committee to consider the issue and make recommendations: Chuck; Julia seconds; approved.
• Phrasing: "Declaration of Interest" rather than "self-nomination"
  • Nominations Committee will need to take care in the call to members
• Elli: Another way of reading the current language in the bylaws: bypassing the Nominating Committee. We need to consider this carefully before changing the bylaws to remove this possibility.

[✔] ACTION: 2009 Nominating Committee will consider this and report back to the ACH Exec.

8. Visits/informational

• presentation from next year's conference organizer
  • College Park, MD: 9 miles/14 KM from Washington, DC. Directly on Green Line Metro
  • One Hotel in district on Green Line
  • June 22-June 25 (M-Th); ADHO exec June 20, ACH meeting June 21
  • Excursion: Monday morning, Smithsonian, some kind of special tour at LoC or National Archives
  • Monday 5pm: Plenary and reception
  • Plenary: Lev Manovich (http://www.manovich.net/)
  • Banquet: T or W night.
    • Baltimore Harbor dinner cruise, enclosed, AC deck with dancing space; traditional Maryland crab whacking and another option; observation deck.
    • Or: Baltimore Aquarium
  • Conference ends at noon on June 25
  • Excursion on June 25 afternoon MAYBE: Air & Space Museum facility in Virginia (space shuttle, 3 hour tour)
  • Advisory Committee: Includes Dean of Information School and head of HCI, and Marsha Nell Smith
  • Meeting in the Student Union: full AV support and food court
  • Lodging
    • On campus Conference center, $150/night (50 room block);
    • On campus dorm housing, $45 single/$55 double (food package also available)
    • 7 other Inns/Hotels in the area, $94-$170;
    • Shuttle from Metro station will be provided
• presentation from this year's conference organizer
  • 171 submissions, 134 papers, 81 accepted (2 declined), about 61% accepted
  • 27 poster submissions, 4 rejected
  • More than 70 papers recommended for publication by reviewers; contact Espen if see especially good presentation
  • 205 delegates, all continents except South America and Antarctica
  • Some problems with out-of-date membership lists from OUP
    
  • Abstracts available online: http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/dh2008/Digital%20Humanities%202008%20Book%20of%20Abstracts.pdf
    

9. Reconfirm appointments of Treasurer and Executive Secretary: [✔] Motion to Approve: John U.; Bethany seconded. Approved.

Adjourned at 4:30 pm.