1995-96
My principal focus has been, and will continue to be, on communications, working to enhance both the formal publication program and intra-group communications. As most of you probably know, I have always been enthusiastic about the potential of the Internet both as a publishing medium and as a medium for group or interpersonal communication.
As a publishing medium, the Net offers an attractive and affordable venue for reaching not only our conservation colleagues--including those in other specialties who may not see our printed publications--but, perhaps as significantly, our friends in allied professions. Both printed and electronic texts have their advantages and disadvantages: the printed versions are often better for detailed study (e.g., reading cover to cover) but lack indexing, color illustrations, etc.); the electronic versions are great for searching, browsing, and reference work, but aren't much fun to read in the bath. The Net seems a natural extension of our printed publication program, and as an experiment I've been working with Robert Espinosa to mount the Annual in the BPG area in Conservation OnLine:
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/aic/bpg/
Volumes 12, 13, and 14 are now available online, including all illustrations. Robert has done a remarkable job of redesigning the Annual, creating an attractive and readable publication that works well both in print and on-screen. In fact the on-line version of Volume 13 includes superb full-color photographs and is really stunning. My small contribution to this effort has been:
It is my hope to extend the on-line publications effort to other BPG endeavors, such as the Paper Conservation Catalog and the Book Catalog now under development. The Book Catalog, under the direction of Olivia Primanis, is being developed from the foundation up as a hypertext document meant to be made available on the World Wide Web. This is a most exciting project.
In the area of group communications, my goal is to find ways to make the day-to-day work of the Executive Council easier by fostering more rapid and efficient communication so that the right hand has at least some hope of knowing what the left is up to. To this end, a confidential email discussion group (electronic mailing list) will be set up for the use of the Executive Council and Committee/Discussion Group Chairs in carrying out its work. The list traffic will be "archived" in a private (password protected) area of the BPG web site, so that the electronic proceedings of the Council will be readily available to future officers/chairs.
In addition, an email address will be established by which members can send messages to the entire Executive Council. The address will be announced in the AIC Newsletter column. Please do get in touch with us and let us know what directions you'd like the group to be taking. I will also investigate the possibility of setting up an online discussion forum for members to discuss BPG business.
For some time, BPG has had a home page in Conservation OnLine (CoOL). (For those who haven't encountered it, CoOL is a web site devoted to information for conservation professionals, offering full-text articles on conservation topics, the archives of conservation-related discussion groups, and the home pages of several conservation organizations, including WAAC, GBW, CPA, etc.) Until now, there has been very little in the BPG area except the Annual, and I'd like to develop these pages to include information of interest to BPG members as well as information about BPG. This effort will dovetail nicely with the web page development project that AIC is considering.
I'd like to establish a BPG Web Working Group responsible for overseeing the development and maintenance of the BPG web pages (designing a coherent, organized look and feel, and creating/maintaining documents), and will be looking for one or two people to take charge of that group. Volunteers with writing and graphic design skills will be needed.
This emphasis on electronic communication does not in any way suggest a diminution of effort in BPG's traditional communications (mailings, newsletter, columns, printed publications), but an extension and enhancement of those efforts. Those without access to the Internet will still get all the information you have been used to receiving through conventional channels.
Beyond the realm of communications, I have very little in the way of agenda and am most anxious to hear your ideas and proposals (especially if you're able to back the idea up with some work).
Walter Henry