JPW

[Lou Burnard]

I don't have any objection to Lee Ellen per se, and the arguments in her
favour are good ones: she should certainly be approached. But (you knew
there was a "but" coming didnt you?) I do feel that the Council should
consider being a little more open and accountable in the way this kind of
procedure is carried out.

Why should the council not issue a "call for participation", stating the
intended scope of the work, and asking for expressions of interest? This
is not only a matter of demonstrating that the TEI is not driven by
insiders only, it's also a matter of making sure we don't miss out on
possibly keen and active participation which we just don't happen to know
about. I have been in this business for a very long time, and I am still
agreeably surprised by the amount of TEI expertise there is out there in
the wild. Issuing a call doesn't preclude the Council suggesting with
whatever degree of force necessary to appropriate persons that they really
ought to respond to said call. The council should then review the
expressions of interest and select accordingly -- and it might be able to
suggest to the chosen workgroup head some useful members for the group
who might not otherwise have been available.

Talking of the "intended scope", it's my belief that all official
TEI-funded workgroups and bodies should have a publicly available charter
setting out their scope of activity and terms of reference. This document
should be prepared *before* the workgroup is set up, in consultation with
the head of the group, and its acceptance by the council and the head
should be a precondition for the existence of the group. If I am not alone
in this belief, then someone needs to draft such a charge, both for this
group (a few paras from the NEH proposal should do the job) and for the
one we appointed under the custody of David Durand.  And Christian should
look at the existing one for the charset group to see how far it needs
change.

<p>Lou

<p><p><p><p>On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, John Unsworth wrote:

> At 12:16 PM 2/1/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> >Lee Ellen Friedland
>
> ....was also a candidate in the recent elections, and it might be nice to
> go back to her with an alternate means of involvement in the
> Consortium.  She has experience, as Perry points out, and she meets the
> criterion Sebastian suggests, in that she has a stake in solving the
> problem.  I haven't been in a committee setting with her, but my guess is
> that she would be likely to get things done, and make sure that others did
> as well.  And since the "large repository" problem is more a library
> problem than anything else, an LOC person makes sense in terms of
> community.  And NEH would probably be happy with the choice.
>
> So, in order to move this along: any objections to asking Lee Ellen to
> chair this workgroup?
>
> John
>
>