Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 01:08:22 -0600
Subject: H-Net: Status Report July 1994
H-Net announced itself to the world in December 1993. By
late June, 1993, we had three lists in operation (H-Urban,
Holocaus and H-Women) with 500 pioneer subscribers. We had--and
continue to enjoy--the strong support of the Computer Center at
the University of Illinois, Chicago. We had two small grants
from the University of Illinois and one from ACLS, and a lot of
ambition. We gained the official endorsement of the AHA, OAH and
Southern Historical associations, but they exercise no control
over H-Net.
Today we have 28 public lists, two affiliated lists, 9 lists
in the planning stage, and a slew of private lists. We have over
12,000 subscribers in 50 countries, with new people signing up
every day. Last month we posted about one million messages.
H-Net met the growth challenge in three ways. First we added
moderators like crazy, and a few non-moderating staff (42
professors, 9 graduate students, 6 others). They are spread out
all over the USA--and include Canadians, Italians and Australians
who make sure that H-NET is a 24-hour operation. The moderators
are all volunteers who contribute their time out of sense that
they are shaping the new communications system in academe.
Each list has started to build an editorial board of scholars,
who meet on-line to advise and help set policy for the lists.
Several lists have become affiliated with professional
associations, providing them with official daily newsletters.
Secondly, we organized ourselves. The comoderators, after an
extended on-line discussion on our in-house lists, wrote a
Charter and elected officers and an Executive Committee to set
policy. The Executive Committee has created a series of
committees to monitor the quality of all our lists, and to shape
policy in regards to issues like copyright, gophers, and book
reviews.
Thirdly we sought outside funds, and finally landed two
large grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, that
will keep us funded through September 1995. The grants allow
H-Netters to travel to conferences and conventions to spread the
e-word, fund a paid staff that handles the increasing load of
technical work, and mandates H-Net to run 16 training workshops
around the USA for showing humanists how to use the Internet
effectively. H-Net received NEH funding to set up private lists
for NEH summer institutes, so that the participants can keep
alive the spirit of their institutes.
Since May we have run workshops at Lake Forest College, the
East-West Center at Honolulu, Penn State (twice), the U of
Tulsa, U of Virginia, U of Wisconsin-Madison, U of
California-Santa Cruz, and the East-West Center (again--what
a trip!), plus short demonstrations at two conventions.
We have discovered that about 20 percent of history professors in
North America are "on-line" (and most of them are subscribers to
H-Net). However we also found that humanists need a lot more
training if they are to use the Internet productively; it seems
that the training materials produced at most campus computer
centers generally do not address the needs of scholars in the
humanities. As a result we have designed an intense two-day
workshop for bringing humanities faculty up to speed on the
Information Highway. (Departments interested in hosting a
workshop should contact H-NET@uicvm.uic.edu.)
Our immediate expansion plans include new lists in areas
such as art history, demographic history, military history,
slavery and abolition, Africa, the frontier, world history,
undergraduate US survey courses, undergraduate Western Civ
courses, and high tech methods in humanities teaching. We need
volunteers to help comoderate these lists, and we remain open to
suggestions for new lists. (A new list needs comoderators, an
editorial board, and a clear mission of service to a humanities
discipline.)
Long-term expansion plans are being debated right now.
Michigan State University has joined the University of Illinois
Chicago in providing computer facilities and staff, and will be
hosting some conferences on teaching history on-line. Impressed
with the need humanists have for timely critiques of new books,
H-Net is starting a large scale program of book reviews on all
the lists. The moderators will soon be asking for volunteers to
write those reviews.
Richard Jensen
Executive Director of H-NET
Richard.Jensen@uicvm.uic.edu