Wired Humanities Project

[John F. Schwaller]

From: "Robert Haskett" <rhaskett at uoregon.edu>
Date: April 6, 2009


Dear national and international colleagues,

(Please excuse any duplication.) I am writing to alert the Mesoamericanist
community to a situation at the University of Oregon that threatens the integrity, and perhaps the survival, of the Wired Humanities Project. At risk are not only WHPs digital Mesoamerican projects, such as the Mapas Project close study of indigenous pictorial manuscripts; http://mapas.uoregon.edu/), the Virtual Mesoamerican Archive finding aid (http://vma.uoregon.edu/), and the online Nahuatl Vocabulary (http://whp.uoregon.edu/NahVocab/), but WHP is currently in the process of adding six sixteenth-century manuscripts to the Mapas Project.  WHP wwas also just beginning to clone and adapt these Mesoamerican projects for use in studies about Asia, medieval Europe, and indigenous cultures of the U.S.  Despite the success of WHP and its ability to win significant grants from agencies such as the NEH and NSF (almost $750,000 since 2006), internal university support is on the brink of disappearing, or at least of being reduced to a level that would make the survival of WHP problem!
 atic.  This situation is not merely monetary in nature (a forced retirement, 100% reduction in support to a technical assistant, more than 50% cuts to graduate students, slashing of office space, etc.), but stems as well from a drive to subordinate WHP to a campus unit whose leadership intends to radically alter its mission, rather than to nurture its successes. If you are willing to make a statement in support of the broader importance of the online resources or in support of the continued leadership and vision of Stephanie Wood at WHP, this would be very helpful.  It is my goal to get these comments to the Vice President for Research, who may be able to reverse the cuts. Here is the link for making your comments: 
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=3DYfayu7axnjRf5AZ23wrUnA_3d_3d

Thank you so much for considering this.
Robert Haskett
Professor of History
University of Oregon
rhaskett at uoregon.edu



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