Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 16:41:52 CET Reply-To: "GRMNHIST - German History Forum" <grmnhist@dgogwdg1.bitnet> Sender: "GRMNHIST - German History Forum" <grmnhist@dgogwdg1.bitnet> From: Thomas Zielke &lt;113355@DOLUNI1.BITNET&gt; Subject: Official Introduction of The History Network The History Network - Official Announcement (please re-distribute and circulate) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear friends and colleagues, it is a great honour and a pleasure to me to send out this document which shall give you some information about The History Network. With best regards, Thomas Zielke Secretary General The History Network -----(cut here)------------------------------------------------------ The History Network is an international collaborative effort by academic historians, graduate students and undergraduates interested in history to maximize the potential of Bitnet and Internet. Conceived by Thomas Zielke, listowner of History-L, in 1992, it has quickly evolved into a viable organization devoted to dissemination of the resources and education required to bring historians into the world of electronic communications. Zielke is the Secretary-General of the entire organization. Its seven divisions and their responsibilities are: 1. Organization: set agenda for Division Director conferences, gather statistics, resolve inter-Divisional conflicts, manage legal affairs, handle relations with governments, governmental agencies, and networks, and represent History Network at conferences. Thomas Zielke is director by virtue of the charter of the History Network calling for the Secretary General to be the ex officio head of this divsion. 2. Resources: develop and disseminate information on distribution sites (FTP, Gopher, WAIS, Veronica), digital materials collection and development, and access to data bases. Donald Mabry is director. 3. Scholarly Exchange: facilitate new and ongoing discussion lists and conferences, including posting of publications and notices. The Directorship is still open. 4. Technical Development, responsible for software development, list operation enhancement, journal and conference presentation methods, and technological adaptation. Skip Knox is Director. 5. Education: recruitment, network training, demonstrations, manuals and handbooks and more). Richard Jensen is Director. 6. Professional Standing: promote recognition of electronic efforts of historian, including electronic publication and service credit; represent History Network at converences and conventions; offer organizational support; general publicity. The Directorship is still unfilled. 7. Finance: Fund-raising for History Network. The Director is Richard Jensen. A Secretary who will function in a role similar to a Deputy Director was appointed in the latter half of February, Charlie Dell is filling the post. A Historian/Archivist are still needed. The original mission of the History Network was articulated by Zielke, who took over the first major history discussion group on Bitnet, HISTORY, and created a more professional list with active participation by a variety of history-oriented individuals. In "History at Your Fingertips, Electronic Information and Communications for Historians," a paper given at Lawrence, Kansas, in September, 1992, he proposed a History Network via e-mail, FTP and Telnet that will facilitate electronic access for historians, help create and technically support specialized history lists, provide FTP and Gopher sites for documents to be stored by historians and accessed by other historians from anywhere in the world, and provide a much faster means of exchange between history scholars of ideas, information, and places to look for deeper documentation on a specific subject. Zielke articulated some long range goals as well. Eventually, an FTP site should support every history list created. We should create more history lists so that eventually every aspect of history will have its own list. Zielke envisioned collaboration or close cooperation with groups like the Gutenberg Project (which distributes e-copies of older public domain books), the Humanities Computing faculty at UC-Santa Barbara, and the Canadian Historian's Association. Eventually there will be a number of sites where papers, bibliographies, lectures, maps, and graphics will be stored, accessible to the ever-widening number of people with net access. Presently, there are two history-related FTP sites, at Mississippi State University and at the University of Kansas. Zielke's paper concluded with two ideas that perhaps are the germ of why the History Network has really been formed: only a very small segment of history professionals use to any degree the tools of computers and electronic communication/data retrieval; and secondly most historians do not yet recognize the potential (or even the legitimacy) of electronic documents and e-mail. The History Network was developed at the same time as another similar effort known as H-Net was being planned at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Richard Jensen, professor of history, and two graduate students were planning a project for training historians about the nets, and using history materials drawn from the networks. Jensen argued that half of the academic historians in the US have a powerful computer on their desks. Many graduate students have one, or have convenient access. The analogy is the Model T Ford, whose owners owned a wonderful machine, but used it only to drive to church on Sunday. H-Net's main goal is to get historians to use their computers for communications and analysis, as well as the word processing with which most have become comfortable. H-Net is working with the American Historical Association and other established history groups, and with college and university history departments, to provide faculty training in the communications capabilities of PCs. Its training materials will be published on the History Network. H-Net has been officially endorsed by the AHA, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association, and will run training workshops at their annual conventions. H-Net will set up a BBS system, which historians can call into (via Internet or telephone) to obtain a menu of files and discussion groups. The BBS will provide "newsletter" like services for the profession as a whole, including announcements of conferences and fellowships, postings of job vacancies, and reports on convention proceedings. The major new source H-Net will create is a combined retrospective index to the major history journals. Editors spend a great deal of effort to compile highly sophisticated indexes of their journals - indexes that go far beyond authors and titles. It will obtain the diskettes used in recent years, and scan the printed indexes of other years. The result will be a large on-line source that will be accessed by a key word search. Students and scholars will use it (free) to gain much better access to the contents of the major history journals. Richard Jensen came well-prepared for this task, having had directed the Newberry Library Summer Institutes, which trained about 600 historians in the 1970s and early 1980s in the new social history, quantification, and mainframe computers. Good ideas come in pairs, as historians of science have long noted. Instead of disputing the territory, the History Network and H-Net have joined forces, with H-Net becoming the Education Division of the History Network. The History Network is barely two months old, and will need the participation of professionals, grad students and undergraduates alike to grow and prosper. The Network promises to serve the history community of the 21st century in ways commensurate with the changes in technology, communication and history itself. The History Network idea promises to link historians together worldwide, speeding messages, creating connections, sharing work and ideas, making personal contacts, and exploring new ways to use the incredibly powerful computer and communications technology of our time. All kinds of talent are needed and desired; many people could join the volunteers already working on the project in a variety of areas, or suggest an angle or project we have not thought about. Volunteers interested in helping out in any of the divisions can send a note to the division director, or directly to the History Network at: HN-ASK-L@UKANVM. Any ideas or projects you may have in mind could be channeled through a Division director, or directly to Thomas or Charlie. The History Network planning committee members are currently: 1) Thomas Zielke, U. of Oldenburg (Germany), 113355@DOLUNi1.bitnet 2) Kevin Berland, Pennsylvania State U. BCJ@PSUVM.bitnet 3) Jim Cocks,U. of Louisville, JACOCK01@ULKYVM.bitnet 4) Charlie Dell, U of Missouri, Kansas City, CDELL@vax1.umkc.edu 5) Lydia Fish, SUNY at Buffalo, FISHLM@SNYBUFVA.bitnet 6) Richard Jensen, U. of Illinois Chicago, u08946@UICVM.bitnet 7) Larry Jewell, Purdue U., jewell@MACE.CC.PURDUE.EDU 8) Ellis "Skip" Knox, Boise State U, dusknox@IDBSU.IDBSU.EDU 9) Agnes Kruchio, U. of Toronto, kruchio@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA 10) Don Mabry, Mississippi State U, djm1@RA.MSSTATE.EDU 11) Lynn Nelson, U of Kansas, lhnelson@UKANVM.bitnet 12) Bob Pasker, San Francisco State U, bob@HALFDOME.SF.CA.US 13) Wendy Plotkin, U of Illinois Chicago, u15608@UICVM.bitnet 14) Kelly Richter, U of Illinois, Chicago, u59611@UICVM.bitnet 15) Bayla Singer, bsinger@ENIAC.SEAS.UPENN.EDU Up