[Corpora-List] VISL and Corpuseye threatened at University of Southern Denmark

[Eckhard Bick]

Dear all,

I would like to share a piece of bad news, hoping it will be relevant 
for enough members of this list to warrant the message. Apologies to 
everybody else.

The Institute of Language and Communication at the University of 
Southern Denmark is planning to shut down its IT center / language 
technology section, a process to be completed by the end of 2012 and 
motivated by budget tightening. One interpretation is that in order to 
finance its teaching activities, the university is amputating its 
research and development activities.

The cuts will affect a large number of activities, projects and 
services, among them the open source Constraint Grammar infrastructure 
and our cross-language NLP and corpus activities at 
http://corp.hum.sdu.dk (CorpusEye), as well as the VISL project with its 
CALL tools for 25 languages at http://visl.sdu.dk.

We believe that SDU's decision is both unwise and short-sighted, and 
that the money saved (minimum expenses of 2 half-salaries and some 
hardware, about 50-60.000 EUR a year) does not balance the damage done.

If you have used our parsers, corpora or teaching tools in the past, or 
if you sympathize for other reasons, please contact either the 
university or the relevant ministry or both, at the below addresses, to 
voice your concern.  Just tell them why you think CG, VISL and CorpusEye 
are a good  idea, and of course - if relevant - how your own work would 
be affected if their development were discontinued.

1. Dean Flemming G. Andersen (fga at sdu.dk)
Det Humanistiske Fakultet
Syddansk Universitet
Campusvej 55
DK-5230 Odense M
Tlf.: +45 - 65502164

2. Rector Jens Oddershede (jod at sdu.dk)
Syddansk Universitet
Campusvej 55
DK-5230 Odense M
Tlf.: +45 - 65501030

3. The relevant ministry for research:
Ministeriet for Videnskab, Teknologi og Udvikling (focus on 
corp.hum.sdu.dk und CG) (http://vtu.dk/, http://en.vtu.dk/)
Bredgade 43
1260 København K
Tlf.: +45 - 3392 9700

4. The relevant ministry for teaching:
Undervisningsministeriet (focus on visl.sdu.dk und CALL) 
(http://www.uvm.dk/, http://www.uvm.dk/)
Frederiksholms Kanal 21
1220 København K
Tlf. +45 - 3392 5000

Thanks in advance,

Eckhard Bick
VISL project


-- 
Eckhard Bick,
cand.med., dr.phil.
University of Southern Denmark
e-mail: eckhard.bick at mail.dk
web: http://beta.visl.sdu.dk


_______________________________________________
UNSUBSCRIBE from this page: http://mailman.uib.no/options/corpora
Corpora mailing list
Corpora at uib.no
http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora