The study of foreign languages in the liberal arts curriculum is defended. Foreign languages reveal the rules characterizing cognitive human activities; they help us to understand both common bonds of humanity and varieties of human behavior. Language study should be central to humanities study. (CHK)

H-NET (Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine) is a new, rapidly expanding international online network of scholars that was established to increase electronic mail communication among individuals. Currently, the program is devoting more attention to World Wide Web-related projects providing information and reference sources. Internal conflict…

Discusses the digitization of the Aberdeen Bestiary and describes plans by Kings College (England) to increase accessibility via the World Wide Web to its humanities collections. Factors influencing the choice of this manuscript for the Web site, the decision to use PhotoCD for digitization, and the potential for further development are discussed.…

Discusses humanities projects that can be facilitated by communications technology: multiple language representations, providing cross-platform multilingual font sets and distributed multilingual enabling technologies; high-quality images and tools for archival image annotation, search, and retrieval; three-dimensional representations to provide…

Explores how small countries are connected to the international research community. Examines contact between faculty members at Norwegian universities and their colleagues abroad. Reveals that international publishing is considerably lower by faculty in the social sciences and humanities, despite the fact that they have almost as many foreign…

Distinguishes between the narrow integration of disciplines, or focusing on solving specific problems, and wide integration, or sharing broad epistemological/metaphysical suppositions across disciplines. Advocates wide interdisciplinarity, arguing that the sciences tend to eliminate values or guiding suppositions when narrowly integrated with…

Election of a new executive director for H-Net, a humanities and social sciences mailing-list network, is marked by controversy over the large role of Michigan State University in the network, due to the incumbent's faculty status there, and over the extent of his authority. The conflict has extended to how open the network should be to diverse…

Describes a graduate level bibliographic instruction course at Columbia University which incorporates computer-based resources and information retrieval and organization, scholarly communication and publishing, and analysis of primary sources. The discussion covers student responses, plans for the future, and the role of academic librarians in…

Describes the explosive nature of past cultural conflict in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, stressing the fragility of current developments. Celebrates the contributions U.S. humanities scholars have made to cultural understanding and political tolerance, emphasizing the need for continued exchange and objective international scholarship. (CH)

Describes a week-long minicourse on poetry (with 14 science professors as participants) held to determine what central features of literary study cause unease for science students. Finds five areas of concern including writers' intentions, significant omissions, faulty interpretations, confused values, and misuse of phrases. Discusses the…

Describes the 14 winners of the 1989 EDUCOM/NCRIPTAL (National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning) Higher Education Software Awards. Highlights include curriculum innovation, collaborative programs on computer networks, interactive video, hypermedia, an increase in humanities participation, and general trends in…

CASE's 1989 National Professor of the Year was J. Dennis Huston, a professor of English at Rice University, who directs a new Humanities Foundation Course for science and engineering students. The one-year core course grounds science and engineering freshmen in history, literature, and culture. (MLW)

Reports on five National Endowment for the Humanities seminars held in Texas to exchange ideas concerning a law mandating a core curriculum in the state's college and university system. Questions centered on the ramifications for the curriculum, selection of courses for revision, and the role of the humanities in such a curriculum. (KO)

Aspects of English-as-a-Second-Language are discussed from the standpoint of a teacher-educator with a particular interest in philosophy, the arts, and humanities and what they signify for the schools. The idea of giving voice to all viewpoints and sociocultural circumstances is considered for content learning and heterogeneous grouping. (Contains…

Discusses humanities scholarship from the research library's perspective. Topics include reference versus citation; bibliographic authority and authority control; library collection development which reflects a variety of research methodologies; retention policies; and the derivative nature of reference and citation.(LRW)