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H-ASIA April 19, 2007 In Defence of the Conference (comment) *********************************************************************** From: ianwelch@coombs.anu.edu.au I appreciate Andrew's remarks, and I hasten to add, again, that I do in fact convene a biennial conference on missionary history, so I am not an utter disbeliever in traditional conferencing. I try to attend our major local conferences but travel to the US is, for a retired public servant pensioner who is lucky enough to have a close but unfunded university connection, out of the question. It is equally out of the question, I believe, for many American scholars in smaller and less financially wealthy colleges, as it is for colleagues in many parts of Asia and Oceania. I am concerned, however, as I have said many times, that the traditional system is now overloaded with too many conferences, many trying to replicate coverage, many too large for the kind of networking often mentioned, and, worst of all, with literally thousands of papers that do not find their way into any kind of publication. There are no serious barriers to placing conference papers online, ie, by the conference organizers, and if that was done, those of us unable to access conferences would still be able to enjoy the professional extension that conferences offer. While access to journals improves almost daily, that represents only a small proportion of the papers presented at conferences. It is that gap that is at the heart of my own interest in encouraging, indeed maximizing, the use of the internet for professional sharing. I was delighted, as I am sure others were, to receive Paul Katz's recent paper "'Their Own Oaths They Hold as Sacred' Judicial Rituals in Western-ruled Chinese Communities." I would be really happy if others would do the same. We need to share our work far more than is currently the case. I emphasize this on H-Asia because of the volume of outstanding work that comes from the US. The size and resources of the American academy is greater than the rest of the English-speaking world put together and it is a serious loss to world scholarship when papers of real worth simply fade into conference history. May I add, my very real sadness about events at Virginia Tech University this week and offer my sympathy to any members of H-Asia who are personally affected by this tragedy. It has preoccupied Australian media this week, and all of us are only too aware that a similar event can happen anywhere. Australia still holds, sadly, a record for such random murders, with an event in Tasmania some years back when 35 folk were killed and as many wounded by a similarly deranged person. Ian Welch Canberra ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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