X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.history
Date:         Sat, 5 Sep 1992 22:05:12 METDST
From:         George Welling <welling@LET.RUG.NL>
Subject:      Bologna AHC conference

I have been keeping quiet for a while, because I was on the anual conference
of the Association for History and Computing held in Bologna, Italy.
(I have been reading all those messages about drinking-habits and I could tell
a tale or two, but I think I won't)
The conference lasted for 5 days and afterwards there were demonstrations of
hypermedia-stuff, which I did not go to see.

If the list would be interested I could try to give an account of this years
conference like I did of last years conference (Odense- Denmark).
But even if you would not be that interested, there are a few things to be
said about some aspects of the conference.
First of all, Josef Smets (Monpellier University, France), finally produced
the book with the papers of the Montpellier conference: Histoire et
Informatique, Actes du Congres, Distributed by Josef Smets and Contact France,
Le Florilege no 2 - Rue de l'Encierro - 34470 Perols - France. It is almost
700 pages and there are quite a number of interesting things in it. Some
articles are in French, some in English. (and some in the strange mixture of
English with continental influences).
Next to that there were three new volumes in the series : Halbgraue Reihe zur
historischen Fachinformatik: (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Geschichte, In
Kommission bie Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, St. Katharinen, Goettingen 1992)

Band A12, Donald Spaeth, Peter Denley, Virginia Davis, Richard Trainor (eds.),
Toward an International Curriculum for History and Computing.
In this volume you will find the results of a Workshop of the IAHC held at
Glasgow University, 15-17 may 1992. It will be quite helpful for those who are
trying to start a curriculum at their own University. I am very sorry to say
that the part on the Dutch Universities is incomplete. Somehow the whole
program of Groningen University was left out, though it is one of the two
places in Europe where you can actually get a degree in History and Computing.
I will prepare an appendix for those who are interested.

Band A13, Jan Oldervoll (ed), Eden or Babylon. On future software for highly
structured historical sources.
This is the result of another IAHC-workshop. It is an interesting piece of
work, which should be read by those interested in the subject. I myself, more
or less completely disagree with the writers in their approach, but we have
discussed that in a two hour session in Bologna, which has led Manfred
Thaller, the president of the IAHC, to ask me to start another workshop on the
dissemination of algoritms specially suited for the historical disciplines.
There are some fine articles in this volume, but I feel very uneasy about the
plans for the future. Maybe this topic could be discussed on this platform
also.

Band A14, Manfred Thaller (ed), Images and manuscripts in Historical
computing.
I have not had the chance yet to read this volume, but "images-handling" is
one of the hot topics.

Band A11, Daniel Greenstein (ed), Modelling Historical Data.
This volume was allready presented in Odense and I have given it a very
favourable review last year.


The whole conference had a few "buzz-words": multi-media, OCR, connections
with Eastern Europe.
Especially this last item should be discussed more thoroughly as it has been
done: the democratic quality of the decisions made on this subject is rather
poor.
I have no serious objections to contacts with and aid for the easter-european
countries in this sphere. I just wonder if it would not be apropriate that
some people who were willing to rewrite history for the old regime should
openly discuss why they did it and if they still hold the same views.
I myself would like to see an increased effort to get to the establishment of
an American Branch of the association. I fail to understand why there is no
such thing: there are lots of us-historians working in this field, why don't
they join the association ? Are there answers out there ?

This conference had a language-problem: I have heard lectures in French,
Italian and English. (I can only understand the first and the last) This is
not a happy solution for international conferences. I know that there is some
national pride involved, but an international academic discourse should not
suffer from an unwillingness to express oneself in the "de facto" language of
the international community. (I hate to admit it, it's not Dutch, nor Italian,
nor German, it happens to be English)
Anyway for next years conference in Graz (Austria), English will be the only
language.

And yes, Bob Morris is right, I stopped remarks about football after the Danes
had beaten us. I am a bad loser, I must admit.

I will post more on the conference later.

--
                =
             ___|_____               George M. Welling
            /        __|____           phone : +31 50 63 54 74
       _|__         /      /             fax : +31 50 63 49 00
      /    /_______/______/                History and Computing  HCI
     /____/    | ______|__                 depart. ALFA-INFORMATICA
 _______|______|_\  o o o |              University of Groningen
      \  o o o o o o o o  |            welling@let.rug.nl
        \                 /
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU