Report on Humanist - ACH/ALLC June 2005

Summary

Humanist has maintained a more or less steady-state for several years, 2004-5 being no exception. This is, then, an unexceptional report.

Management

Humanist is managed chiefly by one person, the Editor, occasionally by the Assistant Editor (David Gants). On the average I estimate that running Humanist requires ca. 30-45 minutes per day, 365 days per year.

Technical help is supplied by the staff of IATH (Virginia) and the Office of Information Technology (OIT, Princeton). IATH maintains mail relaying, message digesting and archiving functions, OIT the Listserv software. Apart from keeping the archive and fixing breakdowns in the software, IATH also supports Humanist by managing the yearly changeover in archive volumes. At IATH Shayne Brandon is particularly to be commended for his help at crucial points throughout the year.

Technically competent members sometimes freely volunteer their services as well.

Membership and messages

Statistics regarding membership and messages are given in the accompanying Excel file, membership-050606.xls, as follows:

  1. Membership data for 2002-3 to 2004-5
  2. Group data, arranging (1) by geographical area
  3. Messages, giving the number of these from 1993-4 to 2004-5
  4. Chart of membership from 2002-3 to 2004-5 from (1)
  5. Chart of membership by geographical area from (2)
  6. Chart of messages per year from (3)

It is, as usual, difficult to know what these statistics indicate. Note that the Humanist year begins 7 May.

As you can see, the absolute number of members is back up by 83 overall from last year, nearly at the level of 2002-3. The gain is primarily due to Canada and the USA, of 13 and 63 members respectively. Note, however, that the growth from Canada has been steady, the change from the USA down last year, now back up. Numbers from Italy and from the Netherlands, noted in last year’s report for their gains, have increased slightly; Sweden’s also. The UK has more than regained last year’s decline.

The grouping of countries by geography and by dominant language is quite rough. It shows, as expected dominance of the primarily Anglophone countries.

The chart of messages per year shows a puzzling variation, up and down in what may be a 3-4 year cycle. Given the nature of Humanist as it has evolved over the years, however, I suspect that this variation has more to do with the editor’s level of participation, i.e. the degree to which he “stirs the pot”, from year to year. Trendlines have been added to make generalizations somewhat easier, esp to highlight the very slow but steady increase.

Events

As during 2003-4 spamming has continued to rise. Acting on a suggestion by David Sitman (Tel Aviv) last year, Listserv was configured to require approval of all posted messages, including those from the editor. This extra step has slightly increased the amount of time required for the daily postings but has solved the flooding of the Humanist archive completely.

New feature

Thanks to Melissa Terras (University College London), the complete plain-text files from Humanist’s first 18 years are available online, via the homepage. Dr Terras is doing a study based on the corpus of messages.

Publication

Humanist is a publication of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing and the Office for Humanities Communication (King’s College London). Since 1995-6, when Stanley N. Katz was its President, Humanist has also been an affiliated publication of the American Council of Learned Societies. Following the two elections to the Presidency since then, of John D’Arms in 1997 and of Pauline Yu in 2003, I have written to the new President to re-establish and attempt to strengthen ties. This has been welcomed by Professor Yu. I note, however, that following an initial expression of interest, there has been nothing further from her.

Recommendations

By a deeply familiar yet mysterious process, Humanist would seem to have taken on as stubborn an identity as any “social fact”. Experience suggests that its more or less steady state is a feature of our landscape.

I note that as recommended last year, thought has been given to how Humanist fits into the new umbrella provided by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), as an expression of its community. This seems exactly right.

The welcome and effective support of IATH, which has continued during 2004-5 as noted, seems stable enough. So also does the quiet support of the Office of Information Technology at Princeton. But as I remarked in last year’s report, ADHO may wish to take a direct role in aspects of its technical operations. In any case the multi-institutional distribution of Humanist’s operations is a valuable sign of its collaborative, international nature and so, I think, should be continued.

As I wrote last year, the ACH and ALLC have rarely used Humanist, and although the endorsement has been unwavering, these associations have not invested resources in its operation. Imaginative administrative help, for example to organize guest editors of topical discussions, would be one way to improve Humanist that would require some investment. A rotating part-time studentship at the (post-)graduate level, funded by ADHO, would have the benefit not only of enlivening discussion but would also strengthen the field as a whole. Part-time or occasional technical assistance to take a proactive role in improving operations (e.g. via a technical audit) might also be a good idea.

Willard McCarty Editor, Humanist 6/6/05