De Re Militari 2007 Business Meeting

Minutes

Presiding:  Professor Stephen Morillo

1.  Treasurer’s Report: Carroll Gillmor, Secretary-Treasurer reported that the De Re Militari account has $4,609.47.  As agreed in the restructuring of the memberships, De Re Militari will settle accounts with Boydell and Brewer at the end of each year.

2.  Kalamazoo sessions: Kelly DeVries. Reported that this was not a good year in dealing with the Kalamazoo conference.  The directorship is in transition with the resignation of Paul Szarmach.  The politics are being worked out by the board.

-For the past five years, De Re Militari has had five sessions including the JMMH Lecture with the four others co-sponsored by the Journal of Military History.

  • Kelly submitted the proposals for the 2007 sessions by the deadline, but problems arose with the conversion of the annual lecture into a roundtable session and Steven Walton’s workshop on the construction of chain mail. The roundtable session came about because the person chosen from abroad was in the process of changing jobs and could not make the trip. The roundtable session was initially dropped from the program because it was not a lecture, and Walton’s workship was denied.  Kelly was in Rhodes trying to get these issues resolved. Finally, Kelly appealed to the interim director who denied the workshop, but agreed to the roundtable session
     

  • Kelly will continue to propose five sessions.  The first will be the JMMH lecture for 2008, and the remaining four sessions will include Early Medieval, High Medieval, Late Medieval, and military technology.  Jay Roberts plans to bring his group of Latin students from Olathe, Kansas to demonstrate the construction of a ballista.
     

  • Kelly emphasized that in years when we have an overseas lecturer, we must have a backup.  The plan for 2008 is to approach John Haldon with Don Kagay as a backup.  Hugh Kennedy of St. Andrews University is a possibility for a subsequent year.
     

  • The Society for Military History:  President Carol Riordan asked De Re Militari to sponsor a session for their conference which will be held in Ogden, Utah, April 14-17, 2008.  The military historian Everett Wheeler recommended strategy manuals as the topic for the session.

3. Report on the Journal:  John France reported that the citation count was very good.  Professor France also noted the administrative glitches of subscriptions, consisting of those who have paid for volume three but have not received it; those who have paid for volume four but have not received it ; people who wanted to buy volume four but could not find out how to do it.  He explained that a clearer system for maintaining subscription lists is now in place.

  • Those who would like to purchase back issues should go directly to Caroline Palmer of Boydell and Brewer and state that they are members of De Re Militari so as to receive the discount.
     

  • The Verbruggen Prize committee:  John France, Richard Abels, and recently appointed Claude Gaier
     

  • Aldo Settia has given permission to have his work translated.

4. Website report: Peter Konieczny

The website now has a total of 210,000 hits on the homepage, or an average of 150 hits per day

  • Peter relies on people to send him their proposed entries for the website.
     

  • There is a possibility of advertising on the site as a way of generating revenue.  For example, Google ads are $1.00 per day or $350.00 per year.
     

  • Peter is interested in putting older issues of JMMH on line.  He will need to talk with Caroline Palmer.
     

  • Peter would like to set up a forum on the website which could be linked with the larger history forum under Medieval History.
     

  • The De re militari website received a terrific review two years ago by the Choice website.

5. Books available for review:  Peter Konieczny, filling in for Steven Walton.  The reviews of these books will be entered on the website.