Allen Renear

Senior Technology Consultant

Associate Professor of Library and Information Science
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel St.
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 265-5216
e-mail: renear@uiuc.edu

curriculum vitae

Allen Renear was Director of the Scholarly Technology Group from its founding in 1993 until January 2001, when he accepted a position on the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. He maintains an active affiliation with STG as Senior Technology Consultant.

Allen's principal research interests concern the ways in which digital documents function as knowledge representation systems. This typically involves developing models of how documents organize and structure knowledge and then exploring how these models can improve document-intensive applications such as digital libraries, scientific collaboration systems, publishing systems, educational technology, and humanities textbases. His current research focus is on the formal and theoretical issues associated with connecting knowledge representation techniques (such as concept ontologies, semantic networks, etc.) with the work being done on text encoding in the XML/TEI community, and tracking how these connections negotiate the interplay between methodology, technology, and theory in humanities research.

These activities build on research conducted with colleagues at Brown University over the last 15 years. See for instance "Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing" (CACM 1987) [Markup87]; "What is Text, Really?" (JCHE, 1990); "Refining Our Notion of What Text Really Is", Research in Humanities Computing, N. Ide, ed., Oxford, 1992/1995 (OHCO92), and "(Meta)Theories of Textuality" in Electronic Textuality: Methods and Theories, K. Sutherland, ed., Oxford, 1997. This work is summarized in "Theory and Metatheory in the Development of Text Encoding" (Monist 1996). Recent work is represented -- although rather telegraphically -- in a set of text ontology slides (Text Ontology 2000).

Allen, along with STG Chief Scientist Steve DeRose, recently participated in the development of the Open eBook Publication Structure 1.0 (OEB), a specification that will support open standards and interoperability in the electronic book industry. He has long been active in promoting the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) as the foundation for digital libraries (see "The Digital Libraries Research Agenda: What's Missing" in D-Lib Magazine).

Since being elected President of the Association for Humanities Computing (ACH) in 1998, Allen has become increasingly involved with broader issues of public policy in technology, education, and the humanities. See for instance his arguments for increased funding of humanities (NINCH: Call for Examples, Vision and Agenda for the Future) and a Fox News interview with on the subject of the humanities in the next millenium (Fox News interview).

Allen received an A.B. from Bowdoin College and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Brown University, specializing in knowledge representation and the philosophy of science. After teaching philosophy for several years, he joined Brown's Computing and Information Services in 1984, first as a systems analyst and project leader, and then as a strategic planner. During this time Allen consulted on or managed many humanities computing projects and became involved in a variety of text encoding and computing activities -- including X3V1.TG8, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and the Association for Humanities Computing (ACH). In 1988 he helped design the Brown Women Writers Project, (WWP), and served at various points as WWP Co-Director, Acting Director, and Director.

In January 2001 Allen joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.