Technology, Scholarship, and the Humanities:

The Implications of Electronic Information

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Preface

In the early fall of 1992, the Getty Art History Information Program and the American Council of Learned Societies organized a conference on the subject of "Technology, Scholarship, and the Humanities: The Implications of Electronic Information." The conference was also cosponsored by The Research Libraries Group, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the Council on Library Resources. The conference participants were a diverse group including working scholars, librarians, technologists, leaders of national institutions, academic administrators, and the leaders of learned societies. The participants received in advance five working papers designed to assist them in defining the issues in each of five areas of concern. This document summarizes the conversations that those papers inspired and delineates the conclusions that arose therefrom.

From the point of view of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Getty Art History Information Program, the conference was a splendid success. Unlike many such gatherings, it concluded with calls and plans for action on a variety of fronts to assist members of the scholarly community in creating, disseminating, and exploiting electronic tools that suit their intellectual goals. We present this summary as an attempt to encourage wider debate and further innovation in the application of technology to problems that humanists face in their scholarly and instructional programs. The American Council of Learned Societies and the Getty Art History Information Program share a conviction that the issues raised here are among the most important questions facing scholarship and teaching in the humanities in the 21st century. We are grateful to the participants in the conference for their energy and their wisdom, and we are pleased to present the results of their deliberations here.

   Stanley N. Katz
   President
   The American Council of Learned Societies

   Michael Ester
   Director
   The Getty Art History Information Program

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Foreword

This volume constitutes a compressed record of an important conference. Its brevity is intended to make it accessible to readers wanting to grasp the salient points of the discussions and conclusions produced by the conference.

The findings of the working groups are offered as guides to those whose decisions affect the creation and use of electronic resources in institutional, technical, scholarly, and philanthropic settings. Reflecting not just the voice of the scholar nor only that of the librarian or systems specialist, this volume, like the conference, has captured the conjoint thinking of diverse, highly placed experts from the many areas tha bear on scholarly computing in the humanities.

Those who want a fuller picture of the thinking that informed the conference are referred to the full text of the keynote address and of the papers commissioned as preparation for the working groups, which are available through the Internet at ftp.cni.org.

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Acknowledgments

Many people contributed their effort and skills to the conference and to this publication. Douglas Greenberg, Marilyn Schmitt, and Susan Siegfried planned the structure and content of the conference. Georgia Freedman-Harvey, with the help of Kezia Schulhof, oversaw all arrangements and preparation of materials for the event. The production of this volume results from the collaboration of the Keens Company and Marilyn Schmitt, the review of Douglas Greenberg and Michael Ester, the editing skills of Phyllis Franzek, and the project coordination of Georgia Freedman-Harvey. Moderators William Cleveland, Julie Gertler, William Keens, Robin Kramer, and Valsin Marmillion; and recorders Phyllis Franzek, Theresa Menard, Greg Roby, Claudia Bohn Spector, and Mark Sugars were essential to the discussions and reports of the working groups. Philippa Calnan and Ruth Goldway helped to bring the conference to the attention of the broader community. For their valued assistance, thanks go to Margie Grey and the staff of the Beckman Center, Jenny Siegenthaler, Cynthia Scott, Candace Frede, Jan Jarel, Nancy Bryan, Karen Letner, Cathy Nakano, and John Sawyer. A grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the American Council of Learned Societies provided a generous subvention for this publication.

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Participants

   Millicent D. Abell
      University Librarian
      Yale University

   William Y. Arms
      Vice President for Computing Services
      Carnegie Mellon University

   Roger Bagnall
      Dean of the Graduate School of 
        Arts and Sciences and Professor
      Department of History and Department of Classics
      Columbia University

   Susan Ball
      Executive Director
      College Art Association

   David Bantz
      Director of Academic and Public Computing
      University of Chicago

   David Bearman
      Editor
      Archives and Museum Informatics

   Suzanne Blier
      Department of Art History and Archaeology
      Columbia University

   Edwin Bridges
      Director
      Alabama Department of Archives and History

   Theodore F. Brunner
      Director
      Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Project and
         Professor, Department of Classics
      University of California, Irvine

   Susan Brynteson
      Director of Libraries
      University of Delaware

   Clay Carson
      Editor
      Martin Luther King Papers and
         Professor, Department of History
      Stanford University

   Mary Case
      Director
      Office of the Registrar
      Smithsonian Institution

   Gillian T. Cell
      Provost
      Lafayette College

   Nancy M. Cline
      Dean of University Libraries
      Pennsylvania State University

   Kinshasha H. Conwill
      Director
      Studio Museum in Harlem

   Gregory Crane
      Director
      The Perseus Project and Associate 
         Professor, Department of Classics
      Harvard University

   Anthony Cummings
      Dean
      College of Arts and Sciences
      Tulane University

   Whitney Davis
      Associate Professor
      Department of Art History
      Northwestern University

   Martin Dillon
      Director
      Office of Research
      OCLC, Inc.

   Lawrence Dowler
      Associate Librarian for Public Services
      Widener Library
      Harvard University

   Joanne Euster
      University Librarian
      University of California, Irvine

   Suzannah Fabing
      Director
      Smith College Museum of Art

   Phyllis Franklin
      Executive Director
      Modern Language Association of America

   Billy E. Frye
      Provost and Vice President for 
         Academic Affairs
      Emory University

   Oleg Grabar
      School of Historical Studies
      Institute for Advanced Study
      Princeton

   Czeslaw Jan Grycz
      Coordinator
      Scholarship and Technology Study Project
      University of California

   Werner Gundersheimer
      Director
      Folger Shakespeare Library

   Susan Hockey
      Director
      Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities
      Rutgers University

   Robert Hollander
      Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
      Princeton University

   Kenneth King
      President
      EDUCOM

   Gwen Kirkpatrick
      Department of Latin-American Literature and 
         Department of Spanish and Portuguese
      University of California, Berkeley

   Richard Lanham
      Department of English
      University of California, Los Angeles

   Marilyn Aronberg Lavin
      Visiting Lecturer with rank of Professor
      Department of Art and Archaeology
      Princeton University

   Gillian Lindt
      Department of Religion
      Columbia University

   Carolyn Lougee
      Senior Associate Dean of the School of 
         Humanities and Sciences and Professor
      Department of History
      Stanford University

   Peter Lyman
      Dean and University Librarian
      University of Southern California

   M. Stuart Lynn
      Vice President
      Information Technologies
      Cornell University

   Jann Matlock
      Department of Romance Languages
      Harvard University

   Willard McCarty
      Assistant Director
      The Center for Computing in the Humanities
      University of Toronto

   Charles J. Meyers
      Program Officer
      The Getty Grant Program

   James Noblitt
      Humanities Chair
      Institute for Academic Technology

   Nicholas Olsberg
      Head Curator
      Canadian Centre for Architecture

   Thomas Reese
      Acting Director
      The Getty Center for the History of 
         Art and the Humanities

   Andrea Rich
      Executive Vice Chancellor
      University of California, Los Angeles

   Robert C. Ritchie
      Director of Research Programs
      The Huntington Library
      Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

   Catherine Rudder
      Executive Director
      American Political Science Association 

   Mario Valdes
      Department of Spanish and Portuguese
      University of Toronto

   Duane Webster
      Executive Director
      Association of Research Libraries

   Richard Paul West
      Associate Vice President
      Information Systems and Administrative Services
      University of California

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