The following are the protocol documents considered by the ADHO Steering Committee at its meetings in Oulu, Finland in June 2008. All protocols except the Fortier Prize protocol were revised and adopted by the ADHO Steering Committee, and were ratifed by the executive committees of two of the ADHO Constituent Organisations meeting in Oulu: ACH and ALLC. The Council of SDH/SEMI considered the protocols by means of email discussion.
The first list below links to the protocols as revised and adopted/ratified in Oulu 23-25 June 2008. The second has a link to the draft protocol of the Fortier Prize, which the committees agreed to discuss and revise further, with a view to formal adoption and ratification at the June 2009 meetings.
The Committee meetings at Illinois in 2007 agreed to the principle of the Busa Prize and the conference Bursaries becoming ADHO awards, and the Zampolli Prize being established under the AHDO umbrella. It was further agreed that for consistency with other ADHO activities, it would be appropriate to establish an ADHO Standing Committee on Awards (SCA) to oversee these and any other awards that ADHO might establish. The protocol for the SCA was based very closely on the protocol for the ADHO Publications Committee. The SCA was established by the ADHO Steering Committee at the June 2008 meetings in Oulu, and Chuck Bush was appointed as its first Chair.
The Busa Award protocol was adapted as directly as possible from the protocol that governed the award from its inception, with the main change being to replace ALLC+ACH with ADHO throughout, and articulation of the principle agreed at the 2007 meetings in Illinois that the Busa Award would be for 'lifetime achievement'.
The Zampolli Award protocol follows the Busa format as far as possible, and was based on the core conception that the Award would be made in recognition of an outstanding piece of work. The draft makes liberal use of the formulation developed by David Robey and Lorna Hughes that was presented at the 2007 meetings. Although the Zampolli award will be presented every three years, a 2-year award process was agreed, as shown in the protocol, on the basis that it will in the nature of things take less time to review nominations for a single piece of work than for a lifetime achievement, and will make an extra year's work eligible for consideration.
The committee meetings in Oulu agreed to increase the value of the Busa Award to 1,500 GBP and to set the value of the Zampolli Award to 1,000 GBP.
The Bursaries protocol was very largely an adaptation of the Bursary scheme operated over a number of years by ALLC, and separately by ACH. The main changes were to do with changing the terms so that 500 GBP is the *maximum* award, with award winners claiming up to the maximum on the basis of expenses incurred in attendance at the conference at which their paper or poster is to be presented. This follows the practice of the ACH bursary awards, and reflects discussion over the years within ALLC at the 'unfairness' of one bursary winner receiving a sum well in excess of their expenses if these are low, e.g. they have a short distance to travel.
The newest award is the Fortier Student Prize. There has been relatively little discussion between the Committees about what form this award might take. A number of possible approaches have been put forward in mainly informal discussions. The draft protocol develops one of these in order to provide something to shoot at, but includes references also to a couple of the other suggestions that have been made.
At the Oulu meetings, there was concern at the draft protocol's direct link between the Fortier Prize and the Bursaries. It was felt that the Award should be open to a wider pool than Bursary winners, and also that it would be more appropriate for the Prize to be awarded for completed work rather than for conference proposals.
The Committees agreed that further discussion and revision should take place by email within and between the Committees, with a view to adopting and ratifying a final version at the June 2009 meetings.
Harold Short, December 2008
harold.short [at] kcl.ac.uk