Dear all,
Thanks to John for getting the ball rolling on discussion. I like
what he is proposing. A few further thoughts:
For 1. (affiliate conference rates) to work we would need a simple
way to be able to compare lists of members so that if COCH/COSH were
to offer such a rate to members of ADHO it could easily check names.
In general the administration of membership has proven complicated
for CC - mainly because no one wants to do the work. I like the idea
that better organized organizations might be able to assist smaller
ones with membership management.
I also like the idea of working together on an electronic
publication. John is right to point out that the more organizations
and volunteers there are the better such a publication would be.
Text Technology is moving slowly in the direction of an
e-publication. It would be important to work out how the still real
costs of managing an e-publication would be supported by ADHO whether
or not it is TT. At the moment TT is supported in part by
subscriptions and partly by local grants and SSHRC grants. Without
subscriptions we would need some other form of support. Stephen
Ramsay has agreed to take on the electronic version of TT, at some
point I would want to bring him and Joanne Buckley (the editor) into
the conversation. I realize, however, that for now we are talking
hypothetically - ie. we want to work out the ADHO and its activities
and then work with selected other groups to move forward on
particular initiatives.
Yours,
Geoffrey Rockwell
>In order to move our deliberations forward, I want to put four
>specific proposals on the table. I look forward to a lively
>discussion of each.
>
>1. Affiliate conference rates
>
>Participating organizations in an umbrella organization (which I'll
>call ADHO, for allied digital humanities organizations) would agree
>to offer members of the other organizations the same terms of
>registration as they offer their own members, at their conferences.
>So, for example, a member of STS could register at the members' rate
>for an ACH/ALLC conference, even if he or she was not a member of
>ACH/ALLC. This would bring a benefit of membership to all
>participating organizations. It would apply at whatever level
>"membership" applied in each organization, as well, so that in TEI,
>for example, that benefit would apply to all members of a project
>(div3 members) or all members of an institution (div0 members).
>Likewise, it would mean that individuals who were members of ACH or
>ALLC could attend the TEI annual meeting for free, if that's the
>cost for TEI members. This benefit would obviously need to be
>subject to a register-by date, for planning purposes.
>
>2. Affiliate conference slots
>
>Participating organizations in ADHO would draw up an agreed-upon
>protocol for proposing (and reviewing) panels in other
>organizations' conferences, and would agree on language that would
>be used to invite such panel proposals in each organization's call
>for papers. So, for example, there would be a standard mechanism
>for proposing a TEI panel at an ALLC conference, or a NINCH panel at
>a TEI meeting, etc..
>
>3. Affiliate publication
>
>Participating organizations in ADHO would have the option of making
>Literary and Linguistic Computing the print journal for their
>organization. LLC is owned by the ALLC, and published by Oxford UP.
>Oxford keeps track of subscriptions, sends reminders to renew, and
>provides ALLC with a portion of the income from each
>subscription--individual and institutional. Participating
>organizations could, likewise, use Oxford's subscription mechanism
>to keep track of their membership and prompt renewals of membership,
>and income would go back to the participating organization in
>proportion to the number of individual subscribers it accounted for
>in the journal's overall circulation. Institutional subscription
>income would be pooled, and used to promote the aims of ADHO, or its
>constituent organizations (by application, I suppose). One of the
>activities of ADHO would be a free electronic publication designed
>to promote the activities of all the participating organizations
>through high-quality, peer-reviewed, free scholarly publishing. The
>journal would also be designed not to compete directly with LLC, as
>follows:
>
>--it would publish "best essays" from back issues of LLC (and, if
>Kluwer wanted to participate, from CHUM), perhaps along with some
>updating, response, commentary, etc.. These selected essays would
>be clearly labeled as to their original publication source, would
>make it easy for readers to subscribe to the print journal (or join
>the organization, or both), and would not constitute enough of the
>back issues to make the print run of back issues unnecessary.
>
>--it would publish new essays that would appear in electronic form
>only. These would be peer-reviewed, using the same process used to
>review for LLC, but essays of this sort would presumably be things
>that could only appear in electronic form, because of their content.
>
>--it would publish supplementary material to essays published in the
>print journals (datasets, additional illustrations, etc.. Here
>again, if Kluwer wanted to participate, in re: CHUM, we would invite
>them to do so, but only on the condition that we could also pick
>"best of" from the back issues of CHUM.)
>
>--it might also encompass newsletter activities--that is, more
>informal kinds of news and publication about the participating
>organizations.
>
>For ACH, the implication of going this way would be that LLC would
>become the print journal of the ACH (as well as of the ALLC, and
>whatever other organizations sponsored it). CHUM would continue,
>one assumes, but it would be disconnected from ACH. Geoff has
>mentioned the possibility that Text Technology might become an
>all-electronic journal; if he's willing to countenance its also
>being free, on the terms outlined above, then it might morph into
>the electronic journal of ADHO.
>
>Organizations with only institutional members (like NINCH and TEI)
>would require some special adaptation of this scheme--perhaps simply
>the option to offer individuals at their member institutions a
>members' rate for subscription to LLC, or perhaps a special library
>rate for the journal, at member institutions.
>
>In general, this would seem to concentrate more of the reviewing and
>publishing in one or two places, making LLC (and Text Technology)
>stronger journals that draw on more authors and reviewers and
>represent more scholarly societies. It would initially cost ALLC
>something to do this, since they'd be putting their institutional
>income in a pool, but if the purpose of that pooling is to advance
>goals that are shared by the ALLC, then that may not be a problem.
>
>4. Legal structures, committees, meetings.
>
>I suggest that ADHO should not exist, legally. If legal structures
>are necessary (for holding accounts, for example) then participating
>organizations that already have legal status (ALLC, TEI, Ninch, at
>the moment) should be used. If an umbrella organization such as
>ADHO is created, the goal should be to do that in a way that uses
>existing structures as much as possible, and creates the smallest
>possible amount of new work, new meetings, new committees, etc.. To
>keep ourselves honest on that point, we should be aiming to disband
>two committees for every committee we create, or make sure that each
>meeting we envision will combine what had previously been two
>meetings, etc.. If we're not strict on that point, this exercise
>will have missed an important opportunity, whatever else it
>accomplishes.
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