============================================================ _REACH_, Fall 1992 ------------------------------- Research & Educational Applications of Computers in the Humanities ----------------------------------- Newsletter of the Humanities Computing Facility of the University of California at Santa Barbara ------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS * UCSB ART HISTORY MULTIMEDIA PROJECT EXPANDS * NEW COMPUTER THESAURUS FOR ART HISTORY * WHEN SMALLER IS BETTER * NEW E-GROUP ON BIBLIOGRAPHIC SOFTWARE * CONFERENCE ON BIBLE AND COMPUTERS * ACH/ALLC AT GEORGETOWN, JUNE 16-19, 1993 * CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING * INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR MACHINE TRANSLATION * JOURNAL ON NATURAL LANGUAGE COMPUTING * COLLABORATIVE WRITING GROUP AT SUSSEX * CONSERVATORS MEET * IAT PUBLICATIONS * E-GROUP ON CORPORA * LANGUAGE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE * ELECTRONIC GROUP ON CHRISTIAN THOUGHT * ACH MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION * DOCUMENTATION FOR HUMANISTS ------------------------------------------------------------ * UCSB ART HISTORY MULTIMEDIA PROJECT EXPANDS Project Apelles, the multimedia tutorial in art history developed by Allan Langdale, UCSB graduate student in art history and staff member of the HCF, is now undergoing its initial testing in an instructional setting. The basic structure of Project Apelles, named after the court painter of Alexander the Great, was described in the Spring 1992 issue of _REACH_. It's a multimedia tutorial on Renaissance Italian art, using images from the commercially available video laserdisc _de Italia_. This fall Langdale installed a test configuration of the program in the UCSB Arts Library, where it is being used by students in Peter Meller's lecture course in Italian Renaissance art from 1400 to 1500 A.D. The students are using it as a tutorial to supplement their research and as a study instrument with which to prepare themselves for examinations. Langdale recently added a new pathway in Project Apelles. Students can now select a particular city on a map of Italy and bring up on the monitor several general views of the city, often spectacular aerial shots. From there they can go to a map of the city and select any one of a number of buildings. They can then tour the building, viewing plans, architectural and decorative details, and works of art contained in the building, such as frescoes, statuary, and altarpieces. Another new component lets students test themselves by answering various questions about unidentified images shown on the monitor. This year, Langdale will be expanding the scope of Project Apelles by adding several new city maps and building plans to the program. He'll also be incorporating additional biographical and historical data, as well as new segments on artistic technique, perspective, and Renaissance art theory. For further information on the progress of Project Apelles, please communicate with: Allan Langdale 6500al@ucsbuxa.bitnet ------------------------------------------------------------ * NEW COMPUTER THESAURUS FOR ART HISTORY The Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP) has announced the release of the Art & Architecture Thesaurus: Authority Reference Tool Edition, the first product using new reference software that AHIP has developed for the field of art history and related disciplines. The Authority Reference Tool (ART) provides personal computer users with immediate and easy access to the vocabulary of AHIP's award-winning Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). In the future ART will be offered as part of other AHIP information resources as well. The AAT is the first comprehensive thesaurus of descriptive terminology used by the fields of art and architecture. Its terminology is arranged both alphabetically and conceptually, and reflects the "common usage" of scholars and catalogers. ART runs on an IBM or IBM-compatible personal computer with 5MB of available hard disk space and with DOS 3.1 or higher. Designed to function with a variety of database and word- processing software, ART can be used either as an independent tool for data entry and searching or as part of an integrated system. The Art & Architecture Thesaurus: Authority Reference Tool Edition is being offered by Oxford University Press at a list price of $125. For purchasing inquiries please communicate with the Oxford University Press at 212/679-7300. ------------------------------------------------------------ * WHEN SMALLER IS BETTER by Nicholas H. Allison Reprinted by permission, _Aldus Magazine_, (c) copyright _Aldus Magazine_, 1992 There isn't a single Tom Clancy technothriller listed in the Italica Press catalog. No Danielle Steel potboilers, no Dick Francis mysteries, no advice on thinning thighs or winning wealth. Instead, the lovingly crafted, 20-page catalog offers medieval and Renaissance texts illustrated with woodcuts, contemporary Italian fiction in translation, and essays and criticism relating to these fields. In an era of consolidation and conglomeration among book publishers, and during a recession that has pushed many small presses to the edge of survival and over, New York's Italica Press has bucked the odds. Its founders and sole staff, the husband-and-wife team of Ron Musto and Eileen Gardiner, have published a steady six books a year for six years, with sales growing consistently. And while it isn't making its founders rich, the press now allows Musto and Gardiner to make a living at what many book lovers dream about: directing, editing, and publishing a line of books that they themselves would like to read. For these two former academics--Musto's Ph.D. is in medieval history, Gardiner's is in medieval literature--the press is a labor of love. At the same time, though, Musto and Gardiner have shown a broad streak of business savvy. They identified a "niche market" no publisher was addressing; they started with a business plan and followed it; and they have kept costs to a minimum. That these two forces have been somehow in balance--the coolheadedness of business acumen and the warmth of passionate commitment--may be the main reason for Italica Press's success. In some ways, Ron Musto and Eileen Gardiner are quintessential New Yorkers. They were born in different parts of Brooklyn, and they met (in the chemistry lab) at Fordham University in the Bronx. They now make their home in the peculiarly peaceful enclave of Roosevelt Island, in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Both of them come from professional families, and both were in the pre-med program at Fordham when they met in 1966. It wasn't long, though, before they realized that they loved history and literature more than medicine, and together they broke away to become academics. "Our families were shocked," Musto recalls. "It was as if we'd run off and joined the circus." They recall with pleasure their years of study, much of it spent poring over manuscripts in Italy and throughout Europe. However, back in the States with their dissertations done, the academic life began to lose its luster. "In the mid-1970s, jobs for Ph.D.s in the humanities almost disappeared," Musto says. He and Gardiner would spend "a year here and a year there" at various universities, as a job would come up for one or the other. It was clear that it would be many years before either could expect a lasting job in their field. Throughout this period, they had sometimes supported themselves with odd jobs in book retailing and publishing. Upon returning to New York in 1981, both began working full- time at jobs including copyediting, acquisitions, proofreading, marketing, and writing, along with a little typesetting and design. At the same time they began to plan their dream of starting a small press. By the mid-1980s they had saved enough, with help from their families, to give it a try. Then, in 1986, they were visiting an architect friend who demonstrated his new toys: a 128K Macintosh computer and a LaserWriter. "He showed us a couple of pages of output," Gardiner remembers. "And we said to each other, `This is what we have to do.'" Within a few months, they had bought the new 512K Mac, Microsoft Word, and a LaserWriter. Deciding which books to publish was harder. One of their reasons for founding a press was that there was so much contemporary Italian fiction unavailable in English. However, they wanted to launch the press with "a whole bunch of titles," rather than staking the venture on a single book. And the only affordable way to do that was to start by publishing out-of-copyright works. Fortunately, their experience in academia suggested a source: medieval and Renaissance texts. They knew of many that were out of print and out of copyright, but that scholars like themselves and their friends still wanted access to. "We decided to start a series of books that were second editions, newly set, with new bibliographies and new introductions, to launch the company," Musto recalls. Adds Gardiner, "It's not a new idea. For instance, this is how Penguin got where they are--by putting out all those great works, including many classics of medieval literature, in the 1960s. We knew of a lot that weren't available anymore. So we thought, `We'll make those available.'" To promote their first six titles, they created a brochure and assembled a database of prospects. This included a few rented lists from appropriate organizations like the Medieval Academy of America, and many names gleaned (for free) from directories of scholars they found at the New York Public Library. Their initial mailing, of about 5,000 pieces, went out in early 1987. "A couple of days later the first check arrived in the mail," says Gardiner. "And basically it didn't stop." The bulk of ltalica's sales still come from direct mail. Musto and Gardiner send out 20,000 to 30,000 catalogs a year, and reliably get a response of 3 to 4 percent (a high number in the direct-mail world). In addition, orders from bookstores and libraries tend to swell following a catalog mailing, indicating a ripple effect. Italica's other main outlet is independent bookstores, mostly in large cities or near universities. Although some major chains have expressed an interest in Italica books, the press gets caught in a Catch-22: the bookstores' computerized inventory systems aren't set up to handle orders small enough for a line like Italica's, so the bookstores prefer to work through a distributor; but the distributors don't want to be bothered handling a list that might appeal to only a fraction of the outlets they serve. Those same bookstore inventory systems reject titles that don't sell within a specified interval, sometimes as brief as three weeks. Musto and Gardiner feel that the business of publishing and selling books has become inhospitable to the kind of publishing house they try to be. "The only thing publishing executives care about nowadays is quick turnover," says Musto. "They're not interested in keeping a backlist that's slow and steady-selling." Traditionally, publishing houses have maintained such a list, meaning that already-published books were still offered for sale. "Literary classics, for instance, would often be on a publisher's backlist, making money in a continuous trickle, rather than in a burst. In the high- stakes, cutthroat publishing world of the last few years, many a venerable backlist has been consigned to oblivion. "As college students, we'd go to the Village and hang out in bookstores," Musto recalls. "And stuff was accessible. You could buy almost anything you wanted, for a dollar or two. That was the culture that we grew up in, and it had a real impact on what we wanted to do." Building up a backlist is a primary goal at Italica. They currently have 28 active titles. A coat closet in their apartment is devoted to on-hand inventory, and they maintain a "warehouse" in Queens--a nine-foot-square ministorage locker. As needed, on Saturday mornings Musto and Gardiner hire a car (they don't own one), and the driver waits outside the warehouse while they retrieve a few more cartons of books. "The whole operation takes about 20 minutes," Gardiner reports. Italica's average press run is 1,200, and they reprint as needed--many of their titles sell steadily. The ability to do high-quality short press runs economically was one of the reasons they chose the printer they did: McNaughton & Gunn of Ann Arbor, Michigan. With typical prudence, Musto and Gardiner still bid out each job to at least three printers, but are always delighted to find that McNaughton & Gunn's bids are the lowest. All artwork for Italica Press books is output on the LaserWriter (now a IIg) in Musto and Gardiner's modest-sized apartment/office, and then shot down by the printer to 80 percent of its original size. This provides a higher effective resolution for the final artwork--good enough that "people we know who work in the graphic arts tell us that we can't be doing the books the way we say we are," Gardiner reports. (It also makes the point size of the books themselves rather odd--what starts out as 14-point type becomes something like 11.2 when reduced.) Musto and Gardiner make no bones about their lack of training as graphic designers. In fact, their first half- dozen books used typewriter-style quotation marks instead of true typographic ones--they were innocent of the distinction until they discovered "smart quotes" in a new version of Microsoft Word. Their grasp of such typographic niceties is evolving as they publish. In contrast, they have long paid attention to another aspect of design: the overall proportion and balance of a page, including height and width of the text block, margins, and placement of graphics. This stems from their academic training. Both did their dissertations on medieval manuscripts, in the course of which they were trained in paleography, the science of identifying, classifying, and editing old manuscript books. A large part of paleography is learning to recognize and appreciate the proportions of a page. "Where our design comes from is from looking at hundreds and hundreds of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts," Musto says with a sort of survivor's pride. For Italica's first five years, Microsoft Word provided all of the page-layout capabilities they needed. But in 1989 they undertook a project with higher graphic ambitions, for which they switched to PageMaker 4.0. Published last winter, it is a richly multilayered book entitled _Aldus and His Dream Book_. It is a biography of and essay about Aldus Manutius, the Renaissance scholar and printer, written by novelist, essayist, and American Book Award winner Helen Barolini; at the same time, its pages are designed as a loving homage to a book Aldus himself created, the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, which Musto says "is considered the most beautiful book printed in the Renaissance." Every page in _Aldus and His Dream Book_ follows the layout of a corresponding page in the _Hypnerotomachia_; in addition, a number of actual pages from the _Hypnerotomachia_ are reproduced for the reader's pleasure. The _Hypnerotomachia_ is a cryptic parable whose title means "Polia's lover's strife of love in a dream"; in it, a young man who loves Polia, a young woman, wanders through a dream world of classical images in an attempt to find her. Written in a hybrid Latin-Italian by the Dominican friar Francesco Colonna in 1467, when he was in his 80s, it is full of symbolism and double meanings (among its admirers was the psychologist-philosopher Carl Jung, who allegedly took up alchemy after reading it). A patron brought it to Aldus Manutius, whose unprecedented publishing operation was a key to the Renaissance. Working with a relatively lavish budget, Aldus threw himself into the project, pioneering a number of groundbreaking typographical effects (including text blocks tapering to a point). The extraordinary woodcuts in the book are unsigned, but are believed by scholars to be the work of Bellini or another master painter of the era. When Musto and Gardiner decided to publish Helen Barolini's account of Aldus's life, they also decided to make the book a detailed homage to the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_. However, it wasn't quite so simple: a "true" edition of the _Hypnerotomachia_ was hard to identify. Various facsimiles had been published over the centuries, some from copies of the 1499 edition that had been expurgated of the more risque woodcuts, some from mediocre original presswork, some poorly reproduced, and some with the text reset in a modern face. However, "collating" a true edition of an ancient work is what paleographers are trained for. Their tools in this case were two differing facsimiles of the definitive 1499 edition of the book, some research on originals at the New York Public and Pierpont Morgan libraries, and an HP Scanjet Plus scanner. In some cases they took a woodcut from one edition and text from another, thereby creating electronically a "truer" edition than actually exists, at least in New York. So far, _Aldus and His Dream Book_ has sold over 1,000 copies in less than a year, making it one of Italica Press's most successful titles. It will likely go into a second printing by early 1993. Musto and Gardiner's lives have become a little easier than in Italica's early days, when both worked full-time and then spent evenings and weekends on their venture. "Fortunately, we don't have a television set," says Musto with a smile, "and that frees up a lot of time in the evenings." But it's clear that the two of them enjoy working together, and the blurry distinction between work and home life bothers them not at all. Musto and Gardiner have no desire to sell Italica Press, nor to take on employees. Eventually they wouldn't mind unloading the marketing and distribution duties to a larger publisher, but would do so only if they retained editorial control. They like publishing books. "As a publisher, you find you have an influence on what other publishers do, on what people teach in courses, on what people have available to read," says Musto. "It's amazing. It goes beyond the material aspect of what you're doing--you're actually creating cultural artifacts." EDITOR'S NOTE The phrase "Self-Publishers" in the headline of the article on Italica Press which appeared in the Summer 1992 issue of _REACH_ may have misled some readers about the nature of the Press. Italica Press does not function either as a self-publisher or as a vanity press. Editors Ron Musto and Eileen Gardiner welcome the opportunity for discussion with scholars in the fields of medieval and Renaissance texts and contemporary Italian fiction. The Summer/Fall 1992 catalogue of Italica Press is now available. Readers interested in receiving a copy of the catalogue should write or phone the Press at: Italica Press, Inc. 595 Main Street, #605 New York, NY 10044-0047 Phone: 800/397-0645 or 212/935-4230 Fax: 212/838-7812 ------------------------------------------------------------ * NEW E-GROUP ON BIBLIOGRAPHIC SOFTWARE BIBSOFT is a new electronic group for anyone interested in discussing software designed for personal bibliographic database management. The addresses of the group and its listserver, in both Bitnet and Internet form, are: bibsoft@indycms.bitnet bibsoft@indycms.iupui.edu listserv@indycms.bitnet listserv@indycms.iupui.edu To subscribe to the group, send an e-mail message to the address of the list server containing the single line: subscribe bibsoft "your name" with your own first and last name in place of "your name," without the quotation marks. Discussions are not restricted to any particular program or hardware. Appropriate topics include comparisons of programs and downloading from library catalogues. BIBSOFT is not moderated, and any message sent to the group address will be distributed to the entire membership. Those sending messages should be sure that those messages are intended for public consumption. If you have questions about the group or problems with its operation, send a note to one of the owners: Jim Morgan ganj@indyvax.bitnet ganj@indyvax.iupui.edu Sue Stigleman stigle@cs.unca.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ * CONFERENCE ON BIBLE AND COMPUTERS The AIBI has announced that Amsterdam will be the site of the Fourth International Conference on Bible and Computers, scheduled for August 14-18, 1994. Its theme is "Desk and Discipline: The Impact of Computers on Biblical Studies." Hosted and organized by the "Werkgroep Informatica," Faculty of Theology, Vrije Universiteit, the conference wil be co- chaired by prof. dr. Eep Talstra (Amsterdam) and prof. dr. Marc Vervenne (Leuven). Administrative and financial support for the conference will be provided by the Netherlands Bible Society. The working language of the conference will be English, although written contributions in French or German, with an abstract in English, will also be accepted. As the organizers say, "With Bible and computers our preeminent question is `What help can computers give in the process of textual analysis?' Is the machine, strictly speaking, only organizing our desk, or is it also capable of organizing our discipline?" prof. dr. E. Talstra Werkgroep Informatica Faculty of Theology Vrije Universiteit De Boelelaan 1105 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone: 31 (0)20.548.4650 or 31 (0)20.548.5440 Fax: 31 (0)20.66.12.937 eep@th.vu.nl prof. dr. Marc Vervenne Faculty of Theology Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Sint-Michielsstraat 6 3000 Leuven, Belgium Phone: 32 (0)16.28.38.28 Fax: 32 (0)16.28.38.58 ------------------------------------------------------------ * ACH/ALLC AT GEORGETOWN, JUNE 16-19, 1993 ACH/ALLC, the 1993 joint annual conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) will be held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on June 16-19. Keynote speakers at the conference will be Hugh Kenner, Franklin and Calloway Professor of English at the University of Georgia, and Clifford Lynch, Director of Library Automation at the University of California, Office of the President. Conference topics will include text encoding; hypertext; text corpora; computational lexicography; statistical models; syntactic, semantic, and other forms of text analysis; as well as computer applications in history, philosophy, music and other humanities disciplines. ACH and ALLC are extending a special invitation to members of the library community engaged in creating and cataloguing network-based resources in the humanities, developing and integrating databases of texts and images of works central to the humanities, and refining retrieval techniques for humanities databases. For further information on the conference, please communicate with: ACH-ALLC93 Michael Neuman Academic Computer Center 238 Reiss Science Building Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057 Phone: 202/687-6096 Fax: 202/687-6003 neuman@guvax.bitnet neuman@guvax.georgetown.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ * CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The University of Manitoba is planning to host an international conference on refereed electronic academic journals on October 1-2, 1993, in Winnepeg, Canada. The conference is being organized by Barbara Crutchley, Witold Kinsner, and Carolynne Presser of the University of Manitoba. Financial support for the conference has been committed by major granting agencies in Canada. It is hoped that the conference will help the academic community become better acquainted with the potential of the electronic networks for the distribution of scholarly publications. A detailed brochure on the conference will be made available in the next few months. For further information on the conference, or to place your name on the mailing list, please communicate with: Conference on Electronic Journals Institute for the Humanities University of Manitoba 108 Isbister Bldg. Winnepeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 Canada Phone: 204/474-9599 Fax: 204/275-5781 umih@ccu.umanitoba.ca ------------------------------------------------------------ * INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR MACHINE TRANSLATION _MT News International_ is the newsletter of the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT) and its three member organizations, the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA), the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT), and the Japan Association for Machine Translation (JAMT). Editor-in-chief of the newsletter is John Hutchins of the University of East Anglia. Regional editors are Joseph Pentheroudakis (AMTA), Tom Gerhardt (EAMT), and Hirosato Nomura (JAMT). Under current plans, the newsletter will be published three times a year, in January, May, and September, and will carry a wide variety of articles, reports, reviews, and notices. According to editor-in-chief Hutchins, "This newsletter has been founded for the exchange of information and opinions about Machine Translation (MT). It is open to all with any interest in this increasingly important field: users (actual and potential), manufacturers and vendors, sponsors and supporters, researchers and developers, and any others who want to know what is going on and what the future may bring." Hutchins adds, "A major goal of IAMT and of _MT News International_ is to provide access to impartial information about systems. It will seek to maintain a balance of views and opinions and not become the exclusive organ for any one particular interest or persuasion." Copies of the newsletter are distributed by each regional association to its own members. Those interested in learning more about the IAMT should communicate with the secretariat of the appropriate regional member association: AMTA 655 Fifteenth Street, NW, Suite 310 Washington, DC 20005, U.S.A. EAMT ISSCO 54 route des Acacias CH-1227 Carouge Geneva, Switzerland JAMT 305 Akasaka Chuo Mansion 2-17 Akasaka 7-chome Minato-ku, Tokyo 107, Japan ------------------------------------------------------------ * JOURNAL ON NATURAL LANGUAGE COMPUTING Edited by Colin Brace and Andrew Joscelyne, _Language Industry Monitor_ is a journal dealing with the world of natural language computing. Every two months it presents its readers with an overview of developments, trends, companies, and new products in multilingual and natural language computing. It tracks a wide variety of rapidly evolving related technologies including speech processing, handwriting recognition, computer-aided writing, terminology management, electronic publishing, and machine translation. Among its subscribers are universities, publishers, translation companies, computer companies, and government agencies. For information on the journal, please communicate with: Colin Brace Language Industry Monitor Eerste Helmersstraat 183 1054 DT Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone: + 31 20 6850462 Fax: + 31 20 6854300 colinb@paramount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl ------------------------------------------------------------ * COLLABORATIVE WRITING GROUP AT SUSSEX The University of Sussex is the home of the Collaborative Writing Research Group (CWRG), whose focus is on the study of collaborative writing and the design of computer tools to support the writing process. Members of the group are Eevi Beck, Steve Easterbrook, James Goodlet, Lydia Plowman, Yvonne Rogers, and Mike Sharples. With funding from the Joint Research Councils' Initiative in Cognitive Science/HCI, the group is working on a study of the social processes of collaboration and the cognitive processes involved in writing, leading to the design development of a new multi-author writing support system. CWRG has now made available a number of papers in both collaborative writing and cognitive science. For more information, please communicate with: CWRG School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, U.K. Phone: + 44 273 606755 Fax: + 44 273 8188 writer@cogs.susx.ac.uk ------------------------------------------------------------ * CONSERVATORS MEET The International Institute for Conservation, Canadian Group, will be holding a special computer workshop in conjunction with its 19th annual conference, scheduled for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on May 28-30, 1993. Presentations will describe various advanced uses of computers in conservation. Special sessions will address such specific subjects as digital imaging technology, data collection tools and methodology, and risk management for conservators. For further information, please communicate with: Rob Stevenson Workshop Coordinator IIC-CG Conference '93 50 Raddall Ave., Unit 1 Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B3B 1T2 Canada Phone: 902/426-3880 Fax: 902/426-8627 ------------------------------------------------------------ * IAT PUBLICATIONS The Institute for Academic Technology, mentioned in the Summer 1992 issue of _REACH_, has just announced that it is making its quarterly print newsletter, _iat briefings_, available in electronic form. The group and list server addresses of the newsletter are: pubs.iat@gibbs.oit.unc.edu listserv@gibbs.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send the usual message to the address of the list server. For more information, please communicate with: Jonathan Pishney jonp.iat@mhs.unc.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ * E-GROUP ON CORPORA CORPORA is an electronic group for information about text corpora, such as availability, aspects of compiling and using corpora, software, tagging, parsing, and bibliography. To join the list send an e-mail message to corpora- request@x400.hd.uib.no asking to be added to the CORPORA list and include your e-mail address. To contribute to the discussion, send a message to corpora@x400.hd.uib.no. For more information on the group, please communicate with: Knut Hofland knut@x400.hd.uib.no ------------------------------------------------------------ * LANGUAGE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE The Second Language International Conference, "Teaching Translation and Interpreting--Insights, Aims, and Visions," is set for June 4-6, 1993, at Elsinore, Denmark. It is being organized by the Center for Translation Studies of the University of Copenhagen; Geoffrey Kingscott, Director of Praetorius Limited (U.K.) and editor of _Language International_; and John Benjamins Publishing Company. Among the plenary speakers is Robert Clark, software editor of Language International (U.K.), who is scheduled to speak on the topic "Computer Assisted Translation--A Matter of Convenience or Survival." For more information on the conference, please communicate with: Cay Dollerup Center for Translation and Lexicography University of Copenhagen 96 Njalsgade DK 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark Phone: + 45 31 542211 Fax: + 45 32 961518 ------------------------------------------------------------ * ELECTRONIC GROUP ON CHRISTIAN THOUGHT Gregory Bloomquist has just announced the formation of ELENCHUS, a new electronic discussion group on Christian thought and literature in late antiquity. The addresses of the group and its list server, in both Bitnet and Internet form, are: elenchus@uottawa.bitnet elenchus@acadvm1.uottawa.ca listserv@uottawa.bitnet listserv@acadvm1.uottawa.ca According to Bloomquist, topics will include "patristics, gnosticism, asceticism, monasticism, archeology, the Nag Hammadi and Manichaean corpora, the canon of Scripture and the early translations of the Scriptures (into, among other languages, Latin, Syriac, Coptic), the history of exegesis (including the appropriation by Christians of the texts of Judaism and other religious, philosophical, or ideological groupings), as well as historical and theological developments from the time of the Apologists to the fall of the Western Empire." The languages of discussion will be English or French. Submissions in either language are welcomed. To subscribe to ELENCHUS, send the standard subscription message to the address of the list server. The address of the owner is: Gregory Bloomquist gbloomq@uottawa.bitnet gbloomq@acadvm1.uottawa.ca ------------------------------------------------------------ * ACH MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION Annual membership includes four issues of the ACH Newsletter and six issues of Computers and the Humanities. Subscribers will receive all issues for the current year. __ U.S. $60, individual regular member __ U.S. $45, student or emeritus faculty member __ Add U.S. $5 for joint ACH / Northeast ACH membership __ Add U.S. $7 for joint membership (couples) Name: ___________________________ Address: ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ Phone: ___________________________ E-mail: ___________________________ Interests: ___________________________ Make check payable to: Association for Computers and the Humanities Mail to: Joseph Rudman, Treasurer Association for Computers and the Humanities English Department Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, U.S.A. rudman@cmphys.bitnet ------------------------------------------------------------ * DOCUMENTATION FOR HUMANISTS During a recent discussion of some exotic point in electronic communication, it occurred to me that increasing numbers of humanists are now entering areas of computing in which the quality of the documentation, if anything worthy of the name exists at all, verges on the abysmal. We've been spoiled, of course, by the high standard of the documentation currently produced by major PC software distributors, and by the wide array of well-designed computer books available in every bookstore. It was not always so, but memories are short. Who now remembers that famous piece of early PC documentation, the original dBASE II manual? Or those dense mainframe VM manuals, printed in head-splitting, unrelieved 6-point type? Or those impenetrable Job Control Language (JCL) manuals which never did get around to explaining the mysterious "Error 1247" which had just brought your program to an untimely halt? We could cheerfully put all of that behind us as long as we stayed with the standard personal computer programs. Now, however, pulled by the attractions of electronic communication, many of us are moving into a new world full of such mysteries as the UNIX vi editor and the more peculiar regions of Kermit, telnet, and ftp. Out there, we're startled to find that the documentation, if any is available, is a far cry from the tidy manual for our favorite word processing program. And so, in sheer self-defense, I've now fearlessly volunteered to edit and produce a guide on computing in the humanities for UCSB humanists. There'll be chapters on general issues, such as electronic text, and chapters on purely local issues, such as the characteristics of the primary UCSB mailing machines. I'll ask experts on each area to contribute chapters on their specialities. The guide will include information about general resources such as the Association for Computers and the Humanities, and Ian Lancashire's indispensable reference work, The Humanities Computing Yearbook. It will be a loose-leaf 3-ring binder, with labeled tabs for each chapter. Pagination will start anew with each chapter so that new chapters can be added, or existing chapters revised, without affecting the rest of the book. Special one-page pre-punched bulletins, designed to be inserted in one of the appendices, will be sent out when sudden changes occur. I'm now developing a tentative table of contents to give me some sense of possible structures. I'd be interested in hearing from readers who are also considering developing their own documentation. --Eric Dahlin ------------------------------------------------------------ _REACH_ is published four times a year by the Humanities Computing Facility of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Advisory Committee: Marla Berns Art Museum Richard Bolton Art Studio Edward Branigan Film Studies Henri Dorra Art History Robert Egan Dramatic Art Ronald Egan East Asian Lang. & Cult. Studies H.S. Gopal Linguistics Gunther Gottschalk, Chair Germanic, Oriental, & Slavic Carl Gutierrez-Jones English Barbara Harthorn Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Michael Ingham Music Sydney Levy, Vice Chair French & Italian Albert Lindemann, Vice Chair History Hugh Marsh Writing Program Giorgio Perissinotto Spanish & Portuguese W. Clark Roof Religious Studies Nathan Salmon Philosophy John Sullivan Classics ------------------------------------------------------------ HCF Executive Director & Editor of _REACH_: Eric Dahlin Phone: 805/893-2208 HCF1DAHL@ucsbuxa.bitnet HCF1DAHL@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ The electronic version of _REACH_ is prepared from the files used to produce the paper edition. A few formatting changes have been made to adapt the text to electronic transmission, but the content of the two versions is identical. A complete table of contents has been included for the convenience of e-mail readers. ======================= end of file ========================