Director’s Report     

May, 2002

It has been a busy time for the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative since our last international meeting in Guadalajara.  I want to give you a few of the highlights of our efforts and our plans for the future.

1.       Conferences

The l2th ECAI Conference will be held May 22-24, 2002 at Seoul National University in South Korea.  The meeting is partly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the National University. Dr. In-sub Hur has been the chief organizer for the meeting.

The 13th ECAI Conference is scheduled for three locations in Japan in September.  The ECAI core teams will meet September 15-18 at the University of Shimane; the full joint meeting with the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium, Information Processing Society of Japan, and the Electronic Buddhist Text Initiative will be at Osaka City University September 20-22; a special session on Tibetan projects will be hosted by the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka.  The website for registration is http://pnc-ecai.oiu.ac.jp.

2.      ePublication of ECAI Projects

After long months of work on a myriad of technical and strategic matters, Kim Carl, Ruth Mostern and Jeanette Zerneke completed the process of preparing the first two ECAI ePublications.  These two publications are:

Guitty Azarpay and Jeanette Zerneke, “A Seal Collection in Context:  Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative Publication of the Edward Gans Collection at University of California Berkeley”

David Bodenhamer, Etan Diamond and Kevin Mickey, “Mapping the Mainline:  Using Historical GIS to Study American Religion”

Under an agreement with the California Digital Library, the union library for the ten campuses of the University of California and the State of California, ECAI materials that have passed peer and technical review will be disseminated and preserved.  This is an attempt to deal with some very important scholarly and practical concerns.  First, we want to be able to document for promotion, tenure and hiring committees that digital internet publications can be given the same consideration as print.  Second, we want to make certain that important sets of data are preserved in a form that will be systematically migrated to new platforms and software in the future. ECAI is collaborating with the CDL eScholarship program under the administration of Catherine Candee on this endeavor.

We expect to see the two publications available for public use in June through the MELVYL internet catalogue of the CDL.  Users will be able to move directly from the catalogue to the resources themselves. This is a pioneering effort on the part of ECAI and we thank all those who are working to make it successful.  CDL is currently in the process of accessioning the publications.  When they are accessible at their final web address, we will inform you. A second round of publications is underway for projected fall release.

3.      Staff Changes

We are sorry to report that with the completion of the Lilly Endowment grant, ECAI no longer has funding for the position of Associate Director. Dr. Caverlee Cary who has held this post and made a significant contribution to the development of ECAI will be moving to a new career on the campus.  We are wish her well. She indicates that she will continue to work closely with the Southeast Asia Regional team.  I know that there are many of our ECAI members who will want to give her good wishes. Please address future correspondence concerning conferences or other matters to ecai@socrates.berkeley.edu.

4.      New Office

In January, ECAI Central moved to a donated office just across the street from the campus with access to campus networking services. Our space has more than doubled in size, and we have access to four brand-new work stations.

5.      Gazetteer Research

We are nearing completion of our one-year NSF funded project for digital gazetteer standards development. In consultation with ECAI collaborators and other gazetteer developers around the world, we have completed a draft for a generic feature type thesaurus and a gazetteer content standard. We will be holding an international workshop later this month hosted by Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

6.      Director’s Activities

Since the 11th ECAI Conference in December in Guadalajara, I have been involved in a number of visits and projects:

Taiwan and Korea:  In January, I made calls on ECAI members and institutions in Taiwan and Korea.  These included Academia Sinica for a discussion of the National Archive Project of Taiwan, the Palace Museum and the future projects that will be connected with ECAI, and Buddhist Tzu Chi University for a discussion of the digital Chinese Buddhist canon based on the Taisho Edition.  In Korea, I was interviewed by several newspapers regarding the 12th ECAI Conference and articles appeared around the country.  Meetings were also held with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to talk about the conference and the digital museum project of the nation.  I also became acquainted with some of the digital projects at the national research centers and Dongguk University.

Rome:  In April, I was invited to give a presentation at the joint meeting of Principal Investigators of the National Science Foundation Information Technology Research program and the European Community.  The meeting was held at the National Research Center of Italy located on the campus of the City University in Rome. My presentation was focused on the gazetteer work.

University of California:  Michael Buckland, the Co-Director of ECAI, joined me in two presentations to librarians at the San Diego and Irvine campuses of the University of California.  We are encouraging the librarians to become involved in helping scholars move into the field of digital research. The sessions included demos of ECAI and discussions about the strategies for moving forward in cooperative efforts.

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco:  There were two opportunities to give demos of ECAI to the docents and supporters of the Asian Art Museum. As the museum moves into its new facility in San Francisco, there are more possibilities for using some of the ECAI strategy to present digital aspects of the collection and the program.

7.      Silk Road Project

Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble gave concerts at Berkeley in coordination with a conference on the cultural and musical features of the trade routes.  ECAI was a part of the planning for this exciting event.  The last session of the conference was a demonstration of a Silk Road Atlas produced by Jeanette Zerneke, Ruth Mostern and Kim Carl showcasing TimeMap technology and ECAI data.  Before each of the sold-out concerts, ECAI was on display in the lobby of the theatre with a demonstration of our Atlas.  We will continue to expand this Atlas in the coming months.  If you are interested in sharing content for the ECAI Silk Road Atlas, please contact ruth@socrates.berkeley.edu

8.      Funding 2002

New sources of funding that have come in during the first half of 2002 have been:

Silk Road Project:  Support came from three UC Berkeley sources:  Cal Performances ($5,000), Center for Middle Eastern Studies ($5,000), Chancellors 9/11 Fund ($4,000).

Korea Conference:  The Ministry of Education and Tourism helped to secure foundation support of $40,000 for the May, 2002  12th ECAI Conference.  The Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley has provided $4,000 for travel of delegates.

OpenLink Collaboration Project The OpenLink corporation of New York, under the leadership of Mr. Coleman Fung has given an initial grant of $40,000 to ECAI for the purpose of  doing research on the use of TimeMap and ECAI strategies for the private sector.

International and Area Studies:  The Dean of International and Area Studies has provided $10,000 for ongoing ECAI expenses.  Also, additional staff salary support has been allocated from his office.