EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR LEXICOGRAPHY
Editor: Paul Bogaards. p.bogaards@let.leidenuniv.nl
This quarterly Newsletter is intended to include not only official announcements but also news about EURALEX members, their publications, projects, and (it is hoped) their opinions, and news about other lexicographical organizations. Please try to support this by sending newsletter contributions to Paul Bogaards at the email address above. The deadlines for spring (March), summer (June), autumn (September), and winter (December) issues are respectively 15 January, 15 April, 15 July, and 15 October annually.
The URL of the EURALEX web site is www.euralex.org
Thomson Scientific Products and Services
The Publisher of the International Journal of Lexicography has been informed that the Journal has been selected for coverage in Thomson Scientific Products and Services. Beginning with IJL 20.1 (2007), information on the contents of this publication will be indexed in Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences Citation Index, Social Scisearch, and Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition.
Secretary Treasurer's Report
Constitution
The Board is proposing a number of revisions to the Constitution, and our (provisional) revised version will be presented at the forthcoming General Meeting in Barcelona, for members to discuss and vote on. The changes are not radical in themselves, but it is vital to keep in pace with changes, in particular the modern communication systems and the political changes in Europe that had not been envisaged in 1984.
Changes include rewording of certain articles so as to clarify board positions and voting rights. It is important that the editor of the journal be an ex-officio member of the board; this was not the case in the early days of the association.
The biggest change will be the abandoning of the International Friendship Fund. This is necessary for two reasons. First the funding system mentioned in the constitution no longer works. We do not receive the gift money that is specified in the current text. The second reason is that the fund was originally created to help countries with currency difficulties. This is no longer applicable as most of these have now joined the European Union, and some may even shortly be adopting the euro. In addition, there are now associations for lexicography on other continents that promote and publish research. For this reason we have to revise the section on IFF funding.
Revising the articles concerning the IFF does not mean we are abandoning any form of sponsorship. We have to find new ways of funding that will aid and assist in the promotion of the discipline and those entering or wishing to enter the field. All suggestions are welcome, but we would appreciate a synthesis before the meeting so as to prepare discussions on this and all areas relating to the constitution.
The proposed changes can be consulted on the EURALEX website.
Proceedings Project
This year we celebrate the first 25 years of the association. Since the outset the EURALEX Congresses have been a central feature presenting the opportunity for researchers, publishers and those interested in the field of lexicography in all its aspects to meet, discuss current issues and present papers. Each congress represents the state of the art of the field at a given time. Many of the papers are now considered classics and essential reading for students of lexicography. The proceedings represent a major task for the conference organiser; only those who have done it appreciate how difficult it is to produce a major volume in so short a space of time. After publication, it is for the organiser to handle distribution, and this is just impossible. The result is that these works of major importance to lexicography simply become unavailable.
The Proceedings Project aims to make all proceedings available in electronic format. The project is funded by EURALEX and has been overseen by Michael Rundell. The project aims to convert all the proceedings into an electronic format so as to eventually render them available on-line under a Creative Commons licence. The earlier proceedings are not available in electronic format and are thus being scanned by Simon Krek's team in Slovenia. After scanning and OCR, they are supplying us with rtf, xml and pdf versions. More recent volumes are being transformed by students at the Université de Bretagne Sud in Lorient, France. In the meantime, in addition to planning a congress, the Barcelona team are building a database of the contents.
The project is moving ahead fast. Three issues remain to be solved:
(1) the transformation of the database into a web usable format;
(2) the redesign of the website with greater storage capacity;
(3) handling copyright issues.
The first two are relatively easy, the third is not. We need to clarify who holds copyright as this depends on a number of factors. In some cases it is through a publisher, in others it may be the congress organiser or the author. It will be necessary to contact each author once a simple agreement has been drawn up. Our aim is to give open access and we therefore propose to use the Creative Commons licence which both protects the rights of the individual author but allows the texts to be made available for all non-commercial usage. Creative Commons licence can be viewed at: http://creativecommons.org/. Contacting each author individually will take time. To ease the procedure we shall be asking those attending EURALEX 2008 to agree to on-line publication for their earlier articles. We shall in the near future also be putting an agreement form on the website. More information will be posted later.
Geoffrey Williams
Forthcoming events
June
19 21, Edmonton, Canada: Fourth International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology . Information: john.considine@ualberta.ca
30 June - 3 July
Bureau of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT),
Stellenbosch, South Africa: 13th International AFRILEX Conference, 'Printed
and electronic dictionaries and the future'. Keynote Speakers: Prof. Piet
Van Sterkenburg (the Netherlands) and Prof. Ngo Kabuta (DRC). Information:
Dr. W. Botha, Editor-in-Chief of the WAT, P.O. Box 245, Stellenbosch 7599,
South Africa. E-mail:
wfb@sun.ac.za. Tel.: +27 21 887 3113, Fax: +27 21 883
9492. Website: http://afrilex.africanlanguages.com/
July
9 12, 1er Congrès mondial de linguistique
française (CMLF-08). Pour tous renseignements: http://www.ivry.cnrs.fr/~ilfspip/spip.php?rubrique4
15-19, Barcelona, Spain: 13th International EURALEX Conference. The conference will be hosted by Pompeu Fabra University. Deadline for receipt of abstracts: October 31, 2007. Please see the EURALEX website for details. Email: euralex2008@upf.edu.