Bethany Townsend |
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Dear Subscribers, When I first began at LINGUIST in June of 2006, I didn't have much of an idea what the organization was really about. Like many people, I knew about the listserv that provides the discipline with information about academic and commercial jobs, conferences, books, and all of the rest, but I didn't know about any of the research projects the organization was involved in. Over the years, my involvement on the various projects here has slowly helped me understand all of LINGUIST's seemingly varied endeavors as a unified whole. Understanding that the EMELD project (http://emeld.org/index.cfm) project gave birth to MultiTree (http://multitree.linguistlist.org/) or that GOLD (General Ontology for Linguistic Description) is an integral part of our newest project, LEGO (Lexicon Enhancement via the Gold Ontology) is something that can easily be overlooked. In the hustle and bustle of accomplishing our goals and meeting both internal and external deadlines, it is easy for people on different teams (each GA is involved in at least 3 and sometimes as many as 6) to miss the "big picture" of what it is exactly that we do here. Furthermore, being involved in these projects and coordinating team efforts (as all of us learn to do) is possible because of the high degree of cooperation, efficiency, and professionalism that LINGUIST List graduate students learn to employ. Although you will hear about all of the projects individually throughout the course of Fund Drive, it is important to note that each has been undertaken with the purpose of creating and supporting the discipline's digital infrastructure, trying to anticipate the needs of the linguistics community. LINGUIST continues to create and maintain all of these resources while trying to support a large number of linguistics students through their MAs. Now, in my 3rd and final year at LINGUIST, watching the office become populated with new faces, it's exciting to think of what improvements and ideas will arise from the next generation of LL GAs. But the learning experiences this job provides that prepare us for our academic careers while simultaneously benefiting the discipline's infrastructure cannot continue without the support of our loyal subscribers. I'd like to extend a sincere and warm thank you to all of you who've supported me and the rest of The LINGUIST List crew in years past and ask that those of you who have not donated this year to please take this opportunity to do so now. https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm Sincerely, Bethany Townsend View Bethany's personal page View Bethany's hometown tour! |
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