Appointment of APA Information Architect

From the APA blog this afternoon:

New APA Information Architect

Read about the appointment of Samuel Huskey of the University of Oklahoma as the APA's new Information Architect. In January he will succeed Robin Mitchell-Boyask of Temple University who provided extraordinary service to the APA as Editor of the web site since 1998.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the American Phililogical Association (APA), I am pleased to announce the appointment of Samuel J. Huskey of the University of Oklahoma to be its first Information Architect.  Prof. Huskey will begin his four-year term at the end of the APA's Annual Meeting this January in San Antonio.  He will succeed Prof. Robin Mitchell-Boyask of Temple University who has provided extraordinary service to the Association since 1998 as the first and only Editor of its web site.

Prof. Huskey's appointment and the expansion of the duties of his office are among the products of a recent review of the Association's publications program.  One result of this process, funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was a decision to use the APA web site and other vehicles for electronic communication more aggressively to increase awareness of and access to the new scholarship generated in its various programs.  The Search Committee I led felt that Prof. Huskey had the scholarly, pedagogical, and technological expertise that would enable him to carry out this expansion of the Association's electronic presence.  Further, as the Association's Gatekeeper to Gateway Capital Campaign enters its final stages, the Search Committee felt that Prof. Huskey would be the appropriate person to coordinate efforts to fulfill the Campaign's commitment to provide the highest quality scholarship about classical antiquity to the widest possible audience in the format appropriate to each segment of that audience.

Another development that also makes possible the expansion of Prof. Huskey's position is the acquisition a few months ago of a new content management system for the Association's web site.  As a result of this new system, APA Office staff is now able to post information about regular society activities themselves.  This was an advantage that Prof. Mitchell-Boyask was able to enjoy only in the last few months of his tenure, and we are especially grateful to him for performing all the work of keeping the site up to date for so many years.  We also appreciate his taking the first steps to expand our electronic presence by creating an APA news blog (http://apaclassics.blogspot.com/) earlier this year.  Our next such expansion will be the creation of a Facebook page for the Association to be overseen by Prof. Judith P. Hallett, Vice President for Outreach.

I look forward to working with Prof. Huskey on increasing our ability to communicate electronically with both our members and all others interested in classical antiquity.

James J. O'Donnell

Vice President for Publications