ACH Special Session: ACH and NINCH

ACH Special Session: ACH and NINCH
Michael Neuman (President of ACH), Chair
David Green (Executive Director of NINCH), Presenter
John Unsworth (Member, ACH Executive Council), Respondent
The ACH-ALLC joint conference protocol welcomes special sessions proposed by chief executives of the two organizations and by the local organizers of the conference. The session described here was proposed by the President of ACH to announce the recent inclusion of the Association for Computers and the Humanities in the constellation of institutions and organizations that comprise the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) and to explore ways in which the affiliation could work to the mutual advantage of the two organizations.
NINCH is described on its home page as a broad coalition of arts, humanities, and social science organizations formed to promote participation of the cultural sector in the new digitally networked environment. NINCH began in 1993 as a collaborative project of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the Getty Information Institute. The two dozen affiliated organizations include national organizations (including ACLS), professional societies (such as the American Historical Association and the College Art Association), universities, and cultural institutions (including the Smithsonian).

The mission of NINCH is to advocate the inclusion of the cultural sector in all policy deliberations on the future of the information infrastructure and to educate policymakers, coalition members, and the general public about the critical importance of translating the vision of connected, distributed, and accessible collections of cultural knowledge into a working reality. Strategies include community building, advocacy, and communications and education -- each of which is described in more detail on the web site.

Among the projects and initiatives planned by NINCH, several may be of interest to members of ACH, especially those on Fair Use and Education, Cultural Diversity and Cultural Heritage (and featuring Web-based "pavilions" on educational themes aimed at secondary and post-secondary students), a series of Advocacy Working Groups on such issues as copyright and metadata, and cross-sectoral interactions such as collaborations between computer scientists and humanists or public- private collaborations to digitize works from our cultural heritage.

The format for the conference session on the ACH-NINCH affiliation will consist of an introduction by the President of ACH on the expertise offered and the opportunities to be gained by the members of ACH, a presentation by David Green (the Executive Director of NINCH) on the mission of the Initiative and the potential role for ACH, a response by a member of the ACH Executive Council, and open discussion among attendees.

At this point in its history, the Association for Computers and the Humanities is seeking to expand its membership, to increase recognition of its members' expertise and its organization's contributions to research and teaching with digital resources, to extend its purview to additional disciplines and additional forms of humanities computing, and to add its voices to the debates currently being waged on issues at the intersection of technology, culture, and policy. This session is designed to explore ways in which an affiliation with the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage would advance ACH towards those objectives while promoting the cultural, educational, social, and political mission of NINCH. All conference participants are welcome.