4.0439 ACH Taskforce on Humanities Computing Support (1/82)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 30 Aug 90 23:01:12 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0439. Thursday, 30 Aug 1990.
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 90 16:20 PDT
From: "Vicky A. Walsh" <IMD7VAW@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: ach taskforce
ACH Taskforce on Humanities Computing Support
One of the outcomes of the ICCH conference last year in Toronto was
the formation, loosely speaking, of a taskforce to come up with a set
of requirements for Humanities Computing support: in other words, a
list of services and other support elements that Humanists should
reasonably be able to expect their Universities to provide. Granted,
this ideal computing support environment would probably never exist
in one place; still, many of the elements should be within the means
of any Humanities College or Division. As the first step in creating
a document describing this ideal, we drew up a list of services etc.
that might be included. This list was distributed to several ACH
members via e-mail and a few comments were forthcoming. Since
we are rapidly approaching the 1991 ICCH, we would like to present
this list for comments from the wider membership of ACH, so that
we may discuss this further in Phoenix. Please direct all additions,
subtractions, and comments to Dr. Vicky A. Walsh, Humanities
Computing, 248 Kinsey Hall, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave., LA, CA, 90024-
1499; imd7vaw@uclamvs. In addition to comments concerning what
should be on the list, we also welcome comments on the relative
ranking of these services: e.g. which are indispensable and which you
can live without. Thanks for your input!
Computing Services for the Humanities:
1. provide personal computer for each faculty member,
2. provide acquisition, support, maintenance, insurance for faculty
machines,
3. provide consulting service for faculty projects,
4. provide programming support for faculty projects,
5. provide special hardware such as text/graphics scanning,
cd-roms, laser discs, video capture, slide production, etc.,
6. support multiple vendors,
7. establish network connections, both internally within the
Humanities and externally to Bitnet, Internet, etc.,
8. evaluate software and hardware of potential interest to
Humanists,
9. establish reference library of software, books, and journals
relating to computing for the Humanities,
10. teach classes, workshops, seminars on topics of interest to
computing humanists,
11. fund projects in computer assisted instruction,
12. establish student computer labs, both centrally, and within
departments, that support faculty developed applications,
13. provide access to multi-media workstations for advanced
projects,
14. provide audio/video production capabilities,
15. support desktop publishing for multi-lingual projects, including
bi-directional and exotic fonts,
16. acquire, produce, store, maintain large data bases for use by
individuals as well as across departmental boundaries,
17. create software of general interest to Humanists if not already
available, e.g. hypertextual access to library catalogs,
18. create documentation as needed for both commercial and
academic applications,
19. establish a mechanism, such as a newsletter or electronic
bulletin board, to provide communication between computing
humanists within the university, as well as a link to humanists
outside the university,
20. provide adequate training of students, graduates especially, so
that they are prepared to use computers effectively when they
graduate and move on to jobs elsewhere.