ECAI has been hosting a series of visitors from our affiliate teams around the world. Susan Whitfield from the British Library gave a presentation to the campus community on her International Dunhuang project. We also discussed ways of cooperation between the ECAI Central project on Chinese religions and the International Dunhuang Institute. Following that visit, Prof. Ge of Fudan University in Shanghai and Prof. Jiang Wu of the University of Arizona came for a working session on the Atlas of Chinese Religions. Prof. Ge has been promoted to the post of head librarian of Fudan University and is exploring ways in which his expertise in GIS can be used in that setting. Prof. Jiang Wu and I will be going to Shanghai next July to move forward on data collection for the 20,000 Buddhist sites of China that we have geo-registered. We were also pleased to have Dr. Maurizio Forte of CNR in Rome visiting to discuss the possibilities for the Virtual Reality technology in cultural heritage work. Additionally, a delegation from Japan consisting of Professors Shibayama, Hara, Oketani spent a week on campus discussing ways in which the Southeast Asian Center at Kyoto University can move forward with collaborations and joint efforts. Finally, Paul Ell from Queen’s University, Belfast, and Ian Johnson from the University of Sydney were here to discuss collaborative projects.

As Director of ECAI, I continue to travel and work on promoting the various outreach efforts of our organization. In December, I gave a keynote address at the Cultural Heritage meeting in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Following that, I visited the Vietnam Buddhist University to discuss the organization of a training workshop next summer and the work of creating a map of thousands of Buddhist sites in that country. This month, travel took me to the Digital Library Colloquium of the University of Pittsburg and Carnegie Mellon University. We discussed various cultural heritage
and historical research projects in Pittsburg that could be put into the ECAI framework. Nest stop was Ohio State and the Huntington Archive. Professors John and Susan Hungtington continue to expand the effort to digitize the 300,000 slides of Asian art and architecture.

We are in the final stage of preparing for the ECAI Conference in Moscow, the 3rd Congress of Cultural Atlases: Time & Space in Eurasia. The conference will run May 29 - 31, with an excursion in Moscow on June 1. The congress promises to be an important joint meeting with the Russian History Association.

Upcoming Conferences

ECAI Congress of Cultural Atlases III - Time & Place in Eurasia
May 29 – June 1, 2007
ECAI Meetings May 28
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
http://ecai.ras.ru

ECAI/PNC/PRDLA joint meetings
October 17-20, 2007
University of California, Berkeley
http://pnclink.org

ECAI Congress of Cultural Atlases IV
April 21-25, 2008
Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia

Recent Events
Numerous ECAI affiliates presented papers at the Museums and the Web Conference, San Francisco, April 11-14, and/or at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, April 17-21.

Upcoming Events

Digital Humanities 2007
June 4-7, 2007
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The 5th International Symposium of Digital Earth Symposium
June 5-9, 2007
San Francisco, CA, USA

Director's Report

May 15, 2007