Late Summer 2006
ECAI will hold its 21st international conference August 16 – 19th at Seoul National University, South Korea. The conference will be held in conjunction with the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium and the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance. Theme and session planning are in progress.

Events
GIS for the Humanities
The Geographic Information Science Center of UC Berkeley hosted Kevin Mickey of the Polis Center offered a one-day workshop February 17 entitled "A Survey of GIS Applications for the Social Sciences and Humanities." This class is envisioned as part of a larger effort to expand GIS training for the application of GIS in non-traditional disciplines. Affiliates in the San Francisco area who are interested in future programs should email ccary@berkeley.edu

Remote Sensing and Archaeology in Southeast Asia
A workshop in Remote Sensing and Archaeology will take place in Bangkok this June 25-26. Prior to the workshop, on June 24, a public presentation on the topic will take place, featuring faculty from UC Berkeley, the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other institutions. This presentation will take place jointly with sessions on Historical GIS, E-Culture, and a joint Thailand-Cambodia archaeological and ethnological project entitled "The Living Angkor Road." For further information, please email ccary@berkeley.edu.

1st International Summer School in Landscape Archaeology and Computer Applications
ECAI is co-sponsoring the 1st International Summer School in Landscape Archaeology and Computer Applications: from the Field to Virtual Reality to be held July 10 -29, 2006 in Rome, Italy. The 19 day course is designed to develop advanced skills in a the combined disciplines of archaeology and technology. The key goal of the course is to teach participants how to manage archaeological spatial data – from field recording to a virtual reality system. For more information, see http://ecai.org/activities/rome2006workshop/Rome_program_summer_school-public.doc

Angkor - Landscape, City and Temple
University of Sydney’s Archeological Computing Laboratory is holding a six day conference, Angkor - Landscape, City and Temple July 18 – 23, 2006. “The conference will provide an opportunity for the international community of researchers to contribute to a definitive overview of recent and ongoing research on Angkor, to discuss future directions and collaboration, and to participate in specialist workshops and training sessions”. See http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=9

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Team Reports
Southeast Asia
Trade Routes -- With the generous support from the Chiang-ching Kuo Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, an exploratory meeting was held in Hoi An, Vietnam, to discuss a major conference on new evidence in the study of pre-modern trade in Southeast Asia. Dr. Roxanna Brown, Director of the Southeast Asia Ceramics Museum, Bangkok University, led discussions of agenda, institutions, and logistical issues. ECAI Southeast Asia thanks those who agreed to attend and contribute to the meeting, and Director Phan Thanh Bao of the Quang Nam Centre for Conservation of Monuments and Heritage for his gracious hospitality. Those who wish to be added to the mail list for updates as plans develop should email ccary@berkeley.edu.
Funding -- ECAI Southeast Asia has received renewed support from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies Al-Falah Program making it possible to continue work on "Mapping the Spread of Islam" for another year. The focus for the coming year will be on adding geo-referenced satellite imagery and geo-referenced photographs.

Austronesia
Work continues on the digital language and culture mapping of Orchid Island of Taiwan and the Batanes of the Philippines, http://ecai.org/austronesiaweb/pacificlanguages.htm. David Blundell recently presented "A'li Bang Bang": Flying fish culture at the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 18th Congress, at the University of the Philippines, Metro Manila.

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ECAI e-Publication and eCultural Atlase Series
ECAI has expanded its ePublication series to include eCultural Atlases. The inclusion of eCultural Atlases into the series will allow ECAI to acknowledge the work done by many of our affiliates, providing more exposure to these resources. Please send us information about the eCultural Atlases work you are doing. Be sure to include such information as: name of the project, a brief description, contributors, URL, and who and how to contact the project.

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Projects
Support for the Learner: What, When, Where, and Who
Lewis Lancaster and Michael Buckland presented a paper on ECAI’s work and on this project at the WebWise 2006 conference on Feb 15-17 in Los Angeles. It is hoped that their paper will be published in the e-journal FirstMonday. The implications of this project for the future of library reference collections was examined in a paper “The Digital Difference in Reference Collections” presented by Michael Buckland at the University of Oklahoma Libraries conference “Printed Resources and Digital Information: The Future of Coexistence,” March 2-3. Publication in the proceedings is intended.

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Other News
ECAI’s was noted in the American Council or Learned Societies draft report from the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for theHumanities and Social Sciences. In its introductory comments on prospects of integrating the vast and distributed cultural record, the report identifies ECAI as “a very practical attempt to make virtual collections of scholarly data from around the globe accessible through a common interface.” We hope this wording survives into the final text!
See: http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/acls-ci-public.pdf

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Director's Report

April 2006