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As the tenth year of the CSA Newsletter begins, it is also time to reassess and restate its mission. The Newsletter has, from its inception, been a vehicle to advance the long-term goals of the Center for the Study of Architecture; it is also a vehicle for advancing the goals of the Archaeological Data Archive Project. Both CSA and the ADAP are, at root, archival projects, but no archive of scholarly computer data can be built if scholars aren't using computers for their work. Furthermore, good data files require thoughtful, careful use of computing technologies. Thus, for CSA and the ADAP, it is important that scholars, whether archaeologists or architectural historians, understand fully the potential of computer technology and of data in computer form - and that they employ the technology well and effectively.
Therefore, the Newsletter will focus, as it has in the past, on real uses of computing technology in scholarship. Reviews of software that may be of use to scholars and discussions of the techniques and processes required will continue to be a major part of the Newsletter. Discussions of electronic publications and issues surrounding electronic publication of serious scholarship will also remain important parts of the Newsletter, since the dissemination of computerized data is the point of the exercise. Reviews of CD ROMs that are of interest to scholars (though not those only of interest to the general public) will appear regularly, as will reviews of computerized assists for museum exhibits and other uses of computer technology either to serve the scholar directly or to bring scholarly information to the public. Since scholars' professional organizations are important to many of the concerns of CSA and the ADAP, information about those organizations will appear regularly, as will notices of meetings of interest. Generally speaking, we will not include notices concerning hardware or software, since there are ample sources for such information already.
As the archives - both the CAD archive that is the base mission of CSA and the archaeological archive that is the mission of the ADAP - grow and evolve, there will be more and more discussions of the archival issues and the growth of the archives.
As the foregoing indicates, the Newsletter will be little changed, but it is important to reconsider and restate its aims regularly.
Next Article: CAA 1997- Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference
Table of Contents for the Spring, 1997 issue of the CSA Newsletter (Vol. X, no. 1)
Table of Contents for all CSA Newsletter issues on the Web