Saturday, 24 October 2009

DRH Domain Name Fail

I was just wondering where next year's Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference was going to be next year - sadly I missed the Dublin conference this year as I had a friend's wedding in the diary so didnt hear the announcement about 2010 - but it surprised me I couldnt find the DRH website anywhere.

My mug from DRH 99 clearly says the URL is http://www.drh.org.uk/. Jump to the link to see where that takes you now.

Sigh. When the Digital Humanities community cant do something like renew a domain name....

I would ping the secretary to tell them, but I dont know who it is, as the website is down.

And if anyone knows where DRHA 2010 will be, and when, let me know.

Update; Lou Burnard (who is currently secretary) says DRHA 2010 will be at Brunel, London. London-tastic for the digital humanities this year!



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4 comments:

  1. Brett Bobley25 October 2009 at 01:08

    I know that the Belfast conference used this URL: http://dho.ie/drha2009/

    I'd guess they've decided to allow each year's host to create a new URL rather than use one consistent one. Perhaps Susan or someone else at DHO will know who is hosting for 2010.

    That said, if they had paid to make mugs with a URL on them, I suppose they should have kept the domain name ;)

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  2. Melissa25 October 2009 at 11:26

    Aye, the domain name was a good place to go to get all the links to all previous conferences - so a place you could go to find out about past programmes, gain access to past abstracts, etc. I think its really important for the community to have a central hub where this kind of information is preserved: academic memory is short, and having an ongoing record of the field - and where past conference were - is important.

    I've heard on the grapevine that its Lou that is secretary - will be interesting to here what he has to say. maybe they could try and get drha.org now they have that extra a.

    Dont get me wrong - I know that these things happen, and when committees change over these kind of things can be a simple oversight - but its a shame that such community records are lost for the want of filing a piece of paper every four years or so.

    And I know there is a lot of grant writing activity going on in the UK just now - and everyone wants to know where DRHA 2010 is so they can include it in their conference costings! :-)

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  3. Lou Burnard27 October 2009 at 10:40

    The domain name was owned by Kings, I think. Certainly they set it up, and presumably they failed to renew it when Alastair ceased being secretary. As incoming secretary, it's probably my fault we didn't deal with this properly.
    I will ping the relevant people on the standing committee to see what can be done.

    For the record though: I believe DRHA10 will be at Brunel, in London. I am not sure who will be programme chair, but the local organizer will be Sue Broadhurst.

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  4. Melissa29 October 2009 at 14:53

    Thanks Lou. And as I said, these things happen, sadly!

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