Of interest to DM, a report from the ACH (Association for Computers and the Humanities: http://www.ach.org/) general meeting at DH2011 (Digital Humanities 2011 conference: https://dh2011.stanford.edu/) Especially of interest may be the last item in the report, a discussion of ACH partnering with other groups to support local/regional events. Not mentioned in the report, there was also a discussion about ACH partnering with scholarly organizations and communities. As someone with connections both to DM (former board member) and to the ACH (current executive secretary) I'd be interested to hear ideas from the DM community on how the ACH might be able to support our community.

Dot

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Humanist Discussion Group willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk Date: Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 4:52 PM Subject: [Humanist] 25.120 report from the ACH at DH2011 To: humanist@lists.digitalhumanities.org

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 25, No. 120. Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist Submit to: humanist@lists.digitalhumanities.org

Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:53:46 -0700 From: Stéfan_Sinclair sgsinclair@gmail.com Subject: Report from ACH Annual General Meeting at Stanford

Dear Colleagues,

This is intended as a brief report on the ACH Annual General Meeting that took place during the Digital Humanities 2011 conference at Stanford. The first notable aspect of the meeting was the astounding attendance: there were over 80 people present. In the past years the meeting has shifted from reporting the deliberations of the Executive Council (not always the most compelling content) to a summary of key points and a more open format of discussion and community-focused initiatives.

We began the meeting by recognizing the passing away of our friend and colleague Chuck Bush, who was the ACH Treasurer and served on its executive council for more than 20 years (see http://ach.org/charles-douglas-bush-1948-2011).

New members of the Executive Council were welcomed and outgoing members were thanked. A warm and sustained ovation was reserved for Julia Flanders, outgoing President extraordinaire.

Next we launched into the annual ACH Jobs Slam, a chance for prospective employees to introduce themselves (Ed Finn and Molly Des Jardin) as well as an encouraging range of job opportunities:

* Mellon Postdocs at Emory: http://bit.ly/disc-postdoc * Research Professorship at BYU: http://bit.ly/jWu6EI * Lecturer in Digital Information Studies at UCL: http://bit.ly/hFCaRH * Assoc. Library Director of Digital Initiatives at McGill: http://bit.ly/kcD1gz * Digital Humanities Academic Administrator at UCLA: http://bit.ly/iCQI4g * Web Developers at NYPL: http://bit.ly/mRGKA0

We also pointed to two very useful lists of jobs: http://www.arts-humanities.net/jobs and http://www.hastac.org/forum/23 Finally, we reminded everyone of the ongoing ACH mentoring programme http://ach.org/mentoring We encourage thesis supervisors who have students finishing and looking for DH-oriented jobs to contact the Mentoring committee.

Following the Jobs Slam we covered some new and ongoing initiatives. In particular:

* the ACH has a completely revamped website! http://ach.org/ * we invited everyone to express interest to get involved in ACH committees * we discussed the success of DHAnswers and invited colleagues to contribute http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/

Finally, we had two open discussion topics. The first was regarding a possible name change for ACH. The Executive Council recognizes that "Association of Computers and the Humanities" may not be as expressive of contemporary digital humanities scholarship and teaching as it might be. Some present pointed out the danger that the title may keep new people away. However, the overwhelming tenor of the discussion was that a change would present several logistical challenges and there was a certain attachment to the historical context that the ACH represents (much like the anachronistic sounding Association for Computing Machinery). Moreover, using the acronym ACH somewhat masks the details anyway.

Second, we discussed possibilities for the ACH to partner with local events to provide more continuous and more regional support and presence for the ACH constituency. A whole range of suggestions were offered and the ACH Exec will try experimenting with some of them and report back about this next year.

Thanks to all who were present and contributed!

[Please do not reply to this message as I use this address for communication that is susceptible to spambots. My regular email address starts with my user handle sgs and uses the domain name mcmaster.ca]

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Dr. Stéfan Sinclair, Multimedia, McMaster University Phone: 905.525.9140 x23930; Fax: 905.527.6793 Address: TSH-328, Communication Studies & Multimedia Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M2 http://stefansinclair.name/

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