TEI: 2004 Chair's Report

Retiring Chair

Following John Unsworth's resignation as TEI Chair in June 2003, Harold Short was named Acting Chair and served until the end of his Board term in December 2003. His contribution to the TEI throughout his term of service was very much appreciated and I would like to extend my personal thanks to him as well, knowing as I now do how much the Chair's role entails.

Changes to TEI Hosts

At the TEI Consortium's founding in 2000, four institutions were named to serve four-year terms as TEI hosts. Those terms are now up, and the hosts may choose to bid again for a second term or to step down.

After four years of truly dedicated service, the University of Bergen has decided not to continue as TEI host, and will devote its energies to supporting the TEI in other ways. In his letter to the Board announcing the decision, Bergen's host representative Daniel Apollon mentioned that the TEI has a strong presence in Norway with considerable potential for new development in the next few years, and the University of Bergen hopes to play a significant role in that work, fostering new collaborations and encouraging new projects. He assures us as well that Bergen will remain a TEI consortial member at its current generous level. Although the Board is very sorry to lose Bergen as a host, we cannot begrudge them this opportunity when they have done so much over the past four years to ensure the success of the TEI. The Board extends its deep thanks to the University of Bergen and to AKSIS for its tremendous contribution.

With Bergen no longer a TEI host, the TEI also loses its Executive Director, Tone Merete Bruvik, who has served in that capacity since the founding of the TEI Consortium, with a brief pause for maternity leave in 2003. It has been a pleasure to have Tone Merete working with us, and we wish her well as AKSIS moves on to focus on new challenges. We also thank Daniel Apollon, who took over as Treasurer for Claus Huitfeldt, and is now stepping down after nearly a year.

The TEI has issued a request for proposals for new TEI hosts, with a particular hope for another European institution to take Bergen's place. The original hosts are also submitting bids to renew their host status. The TEI Board will consider all bids at its fall meeting, and the new hosts will take their places starting January 1, 2005.

TEI Annual Members Meeting, 2005

I am very happy to announce that next year's TEI Members Meeting will be hosted jointly by Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Sofia University. This year for the first time we issued a call for bids and received several very attractive proposals, including venues in Germany, Singapore, and Japan. I would like to express the TEI's warm thanks to all those who offered to host the meeting, and our regret that we could not immediately take advantage of every offer.

The location of the members meeting is an ongoing topic of discussion for the TEI Board, as it bears directly on the issues of recruiting and member benefits. The Board was torn between the wish to make the TEI accessible in areas which are currently underserved, such as Asia and South America, and the desire to ensure that current TEI members can attend the meeting without undue cost. Our current strategy is to hold the annual members meetings in North America and Europe, and to seek ways of funding additional meetings in other regions. We welcome feedback from the membership on this question.

Membership and funding

Funding for the TEI Consortium is an ongoing concern. With its NEH grant now completed, the TEI relies entirely on membership fees for its funding, and although several new members have joined this year, the rate of growth has not been enough to sustain the TEI at its current level of activity. Over the past several years, the TEI hosts have made up budget deficits by increasing their host contributions, paying for staff time and supplying other costs. We cannot count on this level of contribution indefinitely, and one issue we will be considering as part of the new host bids will be how to adjust our level of expenditure to match our revenue.

The TEI Board has discussed several strategies for increasing its funding sources. Recruiting and commmunity-building are clearly essential, and the board is currently developing a plan to work with library schools to incorporate markup languages and TEI into the library and information science curriculum, through presentations and training workshops, with the goal of raising interest in TEI early in library training. We continue to offer support to individual or projects writing grant proposals, to assist them in including TEI membership and funding for TEI encoding in their requests. We also welcome opportunities to collaborate directly with projects in writing grant proposals that support the work of the TEI: for instance, developing specific guidelines, tools, and DTDs for distinct disciplinary communities.