Director's Report

October 2001

ECAI has made some major steps forward during the past month. At the same time, the staff is fully occupied with a busy schedule through the rest of this year. I can only express my appreciation to all of the members who are working to make our venture successful and effective.

ECAI INSITUTE:

In the spring, Michael Buckland and I were able to meet with David Bodenhamer and his staff in Indiana. At that meeting, we discussed ways in which the ECAI strategy should include a training component for project leaders who need help with the GIS software and TimeMap. As a result of this discussion, two ECAI Institutes were planned. The first, held at the University of California, Berkeley campus, has just ended. It was a time for learning but the results were even more dramatic than anticipated. The week long session was planned and executed by Jeanette Zerneke, ECAI Central Technical Coordinator, and Kevin Mickey from POLIS with the help of the director and staff in Indianapolis. Kevin led the way in discussing GIS and TimeMap applications to specific datasets. The overall planning for the first institute was led by Jeanette Zerneke. Providing the team for local arrangements, schedule, and curriculum was the ECAI Central group of Ruth Mostern, Kim Carl, Caverlee Cary, and Rain Simar. They all did an outstanding job and the success of this first institute has given ECAI a new approach in the interaction with the project teams.

The fall institute will be held at POLIS in Indianapolis. It is already over subscribed with project leaders coming from Britain, Georgian Republic, Taiwan, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and the U.S. We hope to raise the funds to have future institutes in the U.S. as well as some sponsored by regional teams in Europe and Asia.

FUNDING

One of the major tasks of ECAI Central is the search for funding to deal with the expanding program of activities. We are pleased to announce that the National Science Foundation has awarded ECAI a grant for $99,000 to begin research on gazetteer tools for GIS and text data sources. This grant has helped to fund the workshop held in Taipei and will give support for one year to joint efforts of Academia Sinica and ECAI Central as well as the work at the Gazetteer section of the Alexandria Digital Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A small grant of $5,000 has been given to ECAI from the Silk Road Project of Yo Yo Ma in preparation for the spring meeting of this group in Berkeley. The Center for Korean Studies at University of California, Berkeley has awarded the Director $5,000 for ECAI related work including Korean material. The European and North American Exchanges in Asian Studies provided funding for the Director to attend the conference in Paris "Image to Action: Dynamics of Visual Representation in Chinese Intellectual and Religious Culture." Some additional travel support for the Director was provided by the World Heritage Meeting in Chinon, France.

DIRECTOR'S ACTIVITIES

I have just returned from a trip that included the following events:

  1. College de France, EFEO conference on "Image to Action" Paris
  2. Ecole Francaise Extreme Orient: Chinese Rubbings Project and publication planning.
  3. Fifth Conference of the European Digital Libraries, Darmstad, Germany
  4. Visits with project teams and leaders:
      1. Orissa Shrines Project, Tubingen, Germany
      2. Reicher Verlag Publishers, Weisbaden, Germany
      3. European Historical Atlas Project, University of Mainz, Germany
      4. Mission Photo Archive, Basel, Switzerland
      5. Golden Web Project, Cambridge University, U.K.
      6. British Library:
        1. International Dunhuang Project
        2. India Office Photographs
        3. Digital strategy for future projects
        4. Arts and Humanities Data Service, University of York, U.K.
          Planning sessions included the History Data Service, University of Aberdeen, Irish Data Project of Belfast, and Edina Ordnance Survey, Edinburgh. I am especially grateful to Sheila Anderson, the Director of the AHDS, for her help in arranging this productive meeting held at University of York.

The wealth of expertise and information among the ECAI community is more impressive than ever. I came away from the visits with a heightened awareness of the development of the digital sphere of scholarship.