Activities and initiatives

Espen S. Ore
May 7, 2003

Aims and objectives

The core associations involved in the AHDOC discussions have a large number of activities currently in operation, some with a local focus, some regional and some global. The proposed umbrella structure will offer many opportunities for collaboration both in existing and new activities at all levels.

It will be important, and often challenging, to work out the most appropriate way to organise and support the various activities. In some cases it will be best for the regional chapter organisations to initiate and administer activities within their regional framework. They will also want to initiate and/or support activities at a 'local' level (national or sub-national) within their region, and to respond to proposals in this context. At the same time there will be activities that are best initiated and/or administered at the global level, with appropriate support from the regional chapters.

The activities of ADHO member organisations that are global in character, such as the TEI, present particular challenges and opportunities, and new collaborative approaches may well have something to offer.

The aims and objectives then are:

To review existing activities to see to what extent they might be harmonized, and whether and where some element of common administration might be beneficial, either in making the activity more efficient or in extending its scope. The existing ALLC and TEI workshops might for instance be integrated into collectively organized workshops.
To develop models for collaboration within the umbrella organization between the various types of member organisations.
To assess the potential for initiatives in geographical areas where there are no existing ADHO member organizations but where there might be interest in establishing them. (The responsibility for contacting people and groups in such locations should probably be agreed at the top level in the umbrella organization.)
To suggest new initiatives and activities.

Range of possibilities (including current practice)

The range of current activities in operation in at least one of the participating organizations is quite large. The ADHO umbrella could:

give financial support at different levels (conference participation grants vs project support and much more)
provide administrative support;
part-finance and help to organize workshops;
assist with information and guidance on standards issues;
collect, review and provide training materials, and develop registers of suitably qualified teachers and facilitators
in collaboration with the member organisations, develop new initiatives

Some of the possibilities and practices can be considered as member support, some as promotional activities and quite a lot as both. A more detailed list of possible activities can be found in the next part.

Proposals

Each of the items listed, where they already exist in some form, may be modified or extended within the ADHO umbrella. The columns Local/Regional/ADHO is meant to suggest where the main responsibility should be. For rows which are checked in two or three columns these checks may represent different levels or kinds of responsibility. (See the comments below for the some of the rows.)

In the table there is quite a lot of local responsibility included. This may be non existent, especially since the suggested organization so far does not include local sub-organizations (meaning that there isn't any money on the local level) - so all the Xs in the local column may be seen as regional responsibilities. But we may imagine a certain level of collaboration between regional ADHO chapters and local groups/organizations in a way similar to the ALLC workshops.

Ê	Local	Regional	ADHO
Busa Award	Ê	Ê	X
Student prize(s)	X	X	X
Conference support for students/young scholars - e.g. bursaries	X	X	X
Professional mentoring	Ê	Ê	X
Employment register	?	?	X
Training: workshops	X	X	X
Training: materials	X	X	X
Documentation - e.g. Guides to good practice	Ê	Ê	X
Consultancy	X	X	X
Project support	X	X	X
Grant-writing support	X	X	X
Information gathering	Ê	Ê	X
Information / guidelines on academic courses and teaching	Ê	X	X
Development/collection of course materials	Ê	X	X
Promotion / validation of software development	Ê	Ê	X
TEI Guidelines	Ê	X	X
Alliances with related standards initiatives	Ê	Ê	X
Promotion of ADHO activities to target audiences	X	X	X
Alliances with relevant associations / organisations	Ê	Ê	X

Busa award: this should probably continue as it is - there should be some changes in the financing and in how the awarding committee is set up based on how the ADHO will turn out. The funding should be from ADHO on a central level rather than as it is now with the ALLC and the ACH funding it alternately.

Student prizes and conference support: for students/young scholars might be given for local conferences (local responsibility, part of local outreach activities) or might be for the main ADHO-conference where it would be natural for ADHO to offer conference support (possibly in addition to local support).

Employment register: even if scholarly work is international to a large degree, it might be useful to have local and regional registers as well as fully international ones.

Training (workshops and material): within the ADHO organizations we already have workshops and development of training material on all three levels.

Consultancy, project support and grant-writing support: these all may require different levels of background knowledge - national, regional (for instance EU grants for grant-writing support) or international.

Financial implications

The proposed funding model for ADHO would leave the regional chapters as the most natural sources of direct funding for activities, although funds could be pooled and centrally allocated where the regional chapters decide this is best for a particular area of collaboration. Proposals for new initiatives, including their funding, could be made centrally, regionally or locally.

Transition requirements/options

Some existing activities such as the Busa award may need to be reorganized to some extent. The key transitional activity is to review the whole range of current activities and to make proposals on how best to take them forward.