Dear Founders & Survivors subscribers,

Our IT team, Claudine Chionh, Sandra Silcot and Robin Petterd are in the final stages of building the new interface and website.

Until that is online and has been through basic testing, Claudine will not be able to help you with any more inquiries for technical assistance, fixing your own entries or navigating your way through the existing website. There is little point in fixing things that are going to be changed anyway and the time consumed is now seriously affecting her ability to complete the very difficult programming task in making the new interface work.

We realise that at your end, we seem to be making very slow progress, but you must appreciate that we are in the process of building what will be one of the most complex and rich digital humanities interactive websites in the world. We are doing this on a shoestring with a small grant from the Institute of the Broadband Enabled Society. That grant is paying for Claudine's time and it does not cover time spent answering public inquiries. I will continue to answer what I can, but my time is limited also, as is my technical expertise.

We are at the busy time of the semester: Claudine also has her own study commitments and I am teaching 3 classes.

We apologise for your long wait, but it is very hard to convey the complexity of the computing work going on behind what seems a simple process.

Finally, we will be holding a day-long workshop (with lunch) in Hobart for volunteers on 18th June in Room 477A in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania.

Please email Alison Alexander on Alison.Alexander@utas.edu.au if you want to come. It will probably start at 11 am and finish about 4pm. We hope to launch the new website for the first time at that meeting. More details to follow.

Best wishes
Janet McCalman