ECAI Meetings

Fudan University and Professor Ge Jianxiong and his colleagues at the Center for Historical Geographic Studies hosted the 2nd Congress of Cultural Atlases in May this year. The three-day conference was packed full - 15 sessions and 12 poster demonstrations; regional team, funded projects and committee meetings; and meetings of the China Historical GIS project of Harvard and Fudan University, and the Berkeley-France Shanghai Project. ECAI representatives met with Greg Cole of GLORIAD to discuss the use of the high-speed networks to support humanities scholarship. It wasn’t all hard work. We enjoyed a tour of the Huangpu River, spent a day exploring regional sites, and had some fabulous meals. We extend our gratitude to Professor Ge and Fudan University for their superb coordination and gracious hosting of the conference.

The next meeting is the joint conference with the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium and the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance in Hawaii, November 1 – 3. ECAI’s third Congress on Cultural Atlases is expected to be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and provisionally scheduled for April 6-8, 2006. A regional meeting is scheduled at Seoul National University in August 2006 in conjunction with the Pacific Rim Digital Alliance and preceding the conference of the International Federation of Library Associations. We hope to have another regional meeting in the Fall in the United States.

Events

A number of ECAI affiliates attended the Summit on "Digital Tools for the Humanities" held at the University of Virginia in September. ECAI Director Lewis Lancaster was a member of the organizing committee. At the conclusion of the summit, four groups were formed dealing with the creation of tools for:

(1) Space, Time, and Uncertainty
(2) Interpretation
(3) Collaboration
(4) Virtual Reality

A full report is being prepared and will be available through a link on the ECAI web site. The groups are attempting to see how the current tools and new tools can be used to create significant advances in scholarship and how to incorporate digital technology.

Jeanette Zerneke was a featured speaker at the Case Western Reserves 2nd Biennial Symposium - GIS Technology: Sustaining the Future & Understanding the Past. Her paper - Dynamic Maps and Cultural Atlases from the Silk Road to North American Missions provided a survey of the accomplishments, issues, and lessons learned in building cultural atlases for ECAI. The presentation touched on three major themes of the conference: 1) Use of GIS technology in the planning for sustainable futures; 2)Use of GIS technology to facilitate historical and socio-cultural inquiry and 3)Use, archiving, and preservation of GIS data. See paper: http://ecai.org/publications/2005/J.Zerneke-CW-09-05-05.pdf

ECAI will co-sponsor the 1st International Summer School in Landscape Archaeology and Computer Applications: from the Field to Virtual Reality. This 3-week program is being coordinated by Maurizio Forte of the Institute of Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage, (CNR, National Research Council, Italy), and will run July 10 – 29, 2006 in Rome, Italy. More information about the program is available from the ECAI web site: http://ecai.org/Activities/Rome2006Workshop/Rome_program_summer_school-public.doc

ECAI Austronesia Activity

David Blundell and Michael Buckland have received a grant of $13,000 for work entitled Orchid Island and the Batanes: A Cultural Atlas of Languages and Cultures. This is their fourth grant from the University of California Berkeley Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines Endowment Fund. Their earlier work can be seen at http://ecai.org/shung-ye/

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ECAI Research at Berkeley

Prior work had shown how place name gazetteers could enhance geographical searching in online library catalogs. Gazetteers supply latitude and longitude, thereby allowing different places with the same name to be distinguished, different names for the same place to be associated, and map displays to show the geographical dispersion of retrieved records and to help express the geographical aspects of queries. Details available at http://ecai.org/imls2002

Recent research applies a similar approach for time. In speech and writing, named time periods (e.g. Vietnam era, Civil War, World War II) are commonly used instead of calendar dates. A Time Period Directory, like a place name gazetteer, has been designed, records for 2,000 events and named time periods compiled, and a prototype constructed with a web-interface. Each named time period is categorized by type of period (reign, war, etc.), assigned calendar dates, and geographical location is noted. Go to http://ecai.org/imls2004/ and try searching from a time line, or by area, using named places (country, world city) or a map interface. When a named time period is selected, a link generates a search for material related to this period in the Library of Congress catalog. This work is part of the Supporting the Learner: Support for the Learner: What, Where, When and Who project supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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Director's Report

October 2005