Technology, Scholarship, and the Humanities:

The Implications of Electronic Information

Plenary Session: Survey of Conference Objectives by Conference Sponsors (Summaries)

   Moderator:  Marilyn Schmitt
               Program Manager
               The Getty Art History Information Program

   Panelists:  Michael Ester
               Director
               The Getty Art History Information Program

               Douglas Greenberg
               Vice President
               American Council of Learned Societies

               Paul Evan Peters
               Director
               Coalition for Networked Information

               W. David Penniman
               President
               Council on Library Resources

               John Haeger
               Vice President for Programs and Planning
               The Research Libraries Group, Inc.

Introductory Remarks by Marilyn Schmitt

This conference was carefully structured to yield concrete results. The planners had commissioned five papers, each addressing a principal topic to be discussed by a working group at the conference. Led by professional moderators, each group is to focus on three key objectives: responding to the prepared paper, formulating short-term and long-term challenges, and defining the various constituencies required to meet these challenges. On the third day, a designated representative from each group will report its conclusions to the plenary session.

Remarks by Michael Ester

Given the large amount of time students spend watching television, given the power of electronic media to engage and transport their users, and given that the Nintendo generation is nearly college-age, we cannot suppose that those pillars of the university--the book, the lecture, the library, and the classroom--will remain unchanged by the impact of information technology.

At the same time, because collection management concerns are largely what drive the development of electronic databases, it is not certain that systems will accommodate the contextual and historical information appropriate to scholarship. Moreover, reformulating information about art objects and art history's other varied research materials costs much time and labor and needs long-term maintenance. Arts research databases have appeared in the national landscape largely as cottage industries, and efforts to coordinate the terms used by various projects have not altered the cacophony of systems that a user must confront. To address these problems effectively, conferences such as this one - in which individuals who actually shape the future developments in their fields can come together - must foster collaboration among scholars, information managers, and technical experts.

The conference's organizers and sponsors particularly hoped that the conference would be a forum through which the humanities would construct a strong, unified message to show funding and professional organizations, government agencies, and university administrations the new structures and collaborative forms that we need. Participants should take advantage of this singular opportunity to give life to our time together beyond this meeting.

Remarks by Douglas Greenberg

Representing 52 humanities and social science organizations, the American Council of Learned Societies has a long history of interest in scholarly communication and in both producing and providing resources to scholars through libraries. In the last several years, technological advances have paralleled significant changes in the methodologies and subject matter of new scholarship in the humanities. This conference presents an opportunity to address both of these issues.

In addition to providing a rare opportunity for a highly diverse group of experts to share their knowledge and experience, this conference will help the ACLS to clarify goals and identify projects for itself and for its member organizations. The ACLS also hopes to find allies who will help the scholarly community become more proactive and organized than it has been in addressing these issues and others, both within our individual institutions and nationally.

Remarks by Paul Evan Peters

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), founded in 1990 by the Association of Research Libraries, EDUCOM, and CAUSE, promotes the creation and use of information resources and services in networked environments. Since its founding, the Coalition has worked to frame the opportunities and address the challenges posed by Internet and the National Research in Education Network as digital media providing scholarly and scientific communications and publications. Last fall, the Coalition sought access to these networks to deliver public information from the U.S. Government Printing Office and other federal agencies. More recently, CNI began investigating the creation, storage, and retrieval of primary research and teaching materials in networked environments, including the ways that networked information services transform our professions' research and instructional practices. CNI aims not merely to manage information resources, but also to help scholarly communities form and grow in a networked environment. In this new context, the Coalition is an enthusiastic sponsor of this workshop and expects it to be a source of new ideas and initiatives that can soon be pursued by separate elements in research and education working together.

Remarks by W. David Penniman

One of the first decisions of the new president of the Council on Library Resources was to support this conference as a natural outgrowth of the Council's long-term interest in technology's impact on libraries and scholarly research, particularly with respect to the humanities. This conference could provide a vision of the future for the humanities scholar--a future in which libraries use technology strategically to promote the intertwined goals of scholarly research and education for all. This meeting will generate exciting new proposals in program areas deemed most important to the Council, including human resources, library economics, infrastructure, access, and processing. Another desirable outcome of the conference would be a discussion of less technical processes, such as browsing and serendipitous discovery, and how automation may enhance, rather than impede, those little- understood practices.

Remarks by John Haeger

The research Libraries Group's co-sponsorship of this conference stems from its long-established interest in the intersection of scholarship and technology, and in the information needs of scholars and scientists in all disciplines. A survey of these needs in the humanities, which we conducted three years ago, revealed three broad tendencies: First, humanists are concerned with improved access to primary and archival materials, and to early printed materials. Second, there is an increased interest in visual resources, especially photographs and prints, even in fields which have not traditionally been image-dependent. Third, there is growing interest in a wide variety of machine-readable data files.

"Is scholarship likely to be better if it takes advantage of information technology? Is there a compelling reason to solve this as a problem? Or is a policy of laissez-faire more appropriate? What are the minimal conditions under which computer - and network - assisted access to information resources becomes the 'bread and butter' of the humanistic professoriate?" This conference could constitute a significant step toward answering these important questions.