“ACH Special Session: ACH and NINCH”
Michael
Neuman
(President of ACH), Chair
David
Green
(Executive Director of NINCH),
Presenter
John
Unsworth
(Member, ACH Executive Council),
Respondent
The ACH-ALLC joint conference protocol welcomes special sessions proposed by
chief executives of the two organizations and by the local organizers of the
conference. The session described here was proposed by the President of ACH to
announce the recent inclusion of the Association for Computers and the
Humanities in the constellation of institutions and organizations that comprise
the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) and to explore
ways in which the affiliation could work to the mutual advantage of the two
organizations.
NINCH is described on its home page
as a broad coalition of arts, humanities, and social science organizations
formed to promote participation of the cultural sector in the new digitally
networked environment. NINCH began in 1993 as a collaborative project of the
American Council of Learned Societies, the Coalition for Networked Information,
and the Getty Information Institute. The two dozen affiliated organizations
include national organizations (including ACLS), professional societies (such as
the American Historical Association and the College Art Association),
universities, and cultural institutions (including the Smithsonian).
The mission of NINCH is to advocate the inclusion of the cultural sector in all
policy deliberations on the future of the information infrastructure and to
educate policymakers, coalition members, and the general public about the
critical importance of translating the vision of connected, distributed, and
accessible collections of cultural knowledge into a working reality. Strategies
include community building, advocacy, and communications and education -- each
of which is described in more detail on the web site.
Among the projects and initiatives planned by NINCH, several may be of interest
to members of ACH, especially those on Fair Use and Education, Cultural
Diversity and Cultural Heritage (and featuring Web-based "pavilions" on
educational themes aimed at secondary and post-secondary students), a series of
Advocacy Working Groups on such issues as copyright and metadata, and
cross-sectoral interactions such as collaborations between computer scientists
and humanists or public- private collaborations to digitize works from our
cultural heritage.
The format for the conference session on the ACH-NINCH affiliation will consist
of an introduction by the President of ACH on the expertise offered and the
opportunities to be gained by the members of ACH, a presentation by David Green
(the Executive Director of NINCH) on the mission of the Initiative and the
potential role for ACH, a response by a member of the ACH Executive Council, and
open discussion among attendees.
At this point in its history, the Association for Computers and the Humanities is
seeking to expand its membership, to increase recognition of its members'
expertise and its organization's contributions to research and teaching with
digital resources, to extend its purview to additional disciplines and
additional forms of humanities computing, and to add its voices to the debates
currently being waged on issues at the intersection of technology, culture, and
policy. This session is designed to explore ways in which an affiliation with
the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage would advance ACH
towards those objectives while promoting the cultural, educational, social, and
political mission of NINCH. All conference participants are welcome.