[Air-l] August 2001 report

Steve Jones sjones at uic.edu
Wed Aug 15 15:21:57 PDT 2001


August 15, 2001
Report of the a(o).i.r. executive committee
Prepared by Steve Jones



AoIR Executive Committee
President: Steve Jones
Vice-President: Nancy Baym
Secretary: Matt Stoner
Treasurer (on leave): Benjamin Bates
Interim Treasurer: Wes Shrum
Open Seats: Beth Kolko and Sean Cubitt
Appointed Seats: Diane Witmer and Fay Sudweeks
Student Seat: Matt Williams
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
2001 Conference Coordinator: John Logie
2001 Conference Program Chair: Leslie Shade
Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess


1.  Introduction & General (Jones)

Below is the monthly report from AoIR executive committee members.

2.  Executive Officers' Reports

2.1 President (Jones)

2.1.1. The AoIR bylaws have been revised to make them better reflect 
the shape the organization has taken. They are available on the 
members web site for review and comment, and will be made available 
generally for review and comment. Please look them over at your 
earliest convenience. Our next election will operate under them. 
Speaking of which...

2.1.2. AoIR elections are also upcoming, and the call for nominations 
will issued soon. Remember that only members who have their dues paid 
up are eligible for nomination, to vote, etc.

2.1.3. Without stealing anyone else's thunder, because the credit is 
all theirs, we have made tremendous progress over the past couple of 
months. The members web site has undergone a major overhaul thanks to 
Jeremy Hunsinger, the conference program and planning under the 
auspices of Leslie Shade and John Logie are going swimmingly, Nancy 
Baym has continued to work with publishers to secure member discounts 
to journals, Charlie Breindahl has assisted with air-l and 
web-related matters, and while I could go on and on I suspect there 
are many others who have helped AoIR of whom I'm unaware -- thank you 
all for your efforts! More information about these follows below, and 
has been posted to the web site.

2.1.4. I'd also like to thank all those who have been posting to 
air-l of late, particularly those who have provided some excellent 
suggestions about things we can do with the web site. And I'd like to 
add my $.02 that we continue with only one air-l for the time being. 
One of the wonderful, albeit not very easy, things about last year's 
conference was simply listening to people from different disciplines 
talk to one another and come up with translations, if you will, for 
conversing about Internet research. I learned a lot by lurking at the 
conference, in a sense. Most disciplinary associations end up 
sub-dividing themselves to the point that there's very little such 
interaction. With the conferences we've divided panels by 
theme/topic, so some division does occur. And of course people do 
tend to flock together, and I suspect there's some "flocking" 
off-list. To me, it's a sign of interest and vitality that we can 
accommodate as diverse a group as we are. And it's a sign of the 
collegiality and professionalism of all those on air-l that we've 
made it a relatively low-traffic, high-info and flame-free list. 
Someday we may end up with multiple lists (or threads on the web 
site, or...), but I, for one, will stay subscribed to air-l, and hope 
that it will continue to be the "melting pot" of interests that it 
has become.

2.2 Vice President (Baym)

2.2.1 No report.


2.3 Secretary (Stoner)

2.3.1 No report.


2.4 Treasurer (Bates)

2.4.1 No report.


2.5 Open Seats (Kolko, Cubitt)

2.5.1 Kolko: No report.

2.5.2 Cubitt: No report.


2.6 Appointed Seats (Witmer, Sudweeks)

2.6.1 Witmer: Nothing to report.

2.6.2 Sudweeks: No report.


2.7 Student Seat (Williams)

2.7.1 No report.


2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: Created new membership management system, new 
members portal system, replaced static pages. It has news sections 
for:
research news
job announcements
conference announcements
etc.

Web site now has:
a calendar
a synchronous chat system
an asynchronous chat system
a faq system
a glossary system
a polling system
a members listing

Members should feel free to use it at your leisure as you see fit. 
It is not anonymous.

Ported information on old members page to new members system. Helped 
John, Leslie, Charlie


2.8.2 Breindahl: I have taken part in the bylaws revision and the 
aoir.org members area discussion. In the next couple of months, I 
will try to devote more time to supplying content to the members area.


2.9 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator and Leslie Shade, Program Chair)

2.9.1 Logie: I'm pleased that, according to Jeremy, we're now fifteen 
days ahead of last year's schedule. The conference web pages are at 
http://aoir.org/2001/program.htm et seq. Leslie will also be sending 
out a mass e-mail shortly to alert folks to the program's 
availability. Registration is strong to date. We have 80 registrants.

2.9.2 Shade: (See above.)


2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)

2.10.1 : The group is concluding its discussion of a case study 
provided by Malin Svenningson and the "Guidelines for research ethics 
in the social sciences, law and the humanities" recently released by 
the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and 
the Humanities (NESH - Norway) 
<http://www.etikkom.no/NESH/guidelines.htm>.  Members of the 
committee attending the aoir conference in Minneapolis this October 
will meet the evening of October 9 to finalize their comments to the 
conference and plan for subsequent work.




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