LINGUIST List 11.749

Mon Apr 3 2000

All: The Year 2000 LINGUIST Fund Drive

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. linguist, The Year 2000 LINGUIST Fund Drive

Dear Linguists,
	
Spring is in the air, and our annual LINGUIST Fund Drive is now 
officially under way. As a non-profit academic list, LINGUIST 
depends on your help to support the seven student editors and two 
student programmers who work to deliver the services you've 
become accustomed to--and also to develop the new services you 
suggest. 
	
With almost 13,000 subscribers worldwide, LINGUIST is probably 
the most widely read linguistic publication in the world. During 
March, 2000, we sent out 87,000 email messages a day. And the 
main web site (exclusive of the 4 mirror sites) receives over 
300,000 hits per week. The LINGUIST site now has over 2,000 
pages of data, and most of these pages contain hundreds of links 
to other linguistic and linguistics-related websites. 
	
As a subscriber, you enjoy the convenience of having 
announcements of New Books and Journals, Jobs, Conferences, 
and Calls for Papers sent to your own email account. We also 
provide you with Book Reviews, The Notice Board, and access to 
linguistics Discussions. When you need information for research, 
you can ask 13,000 of your colleagues for help through the Queries 
issues. You can also search the Dissertation Abstracts Directory, 
the Directory of Undergraduate and Graduate Linguistics Programs, 
and the Directory of Linguists. You can refer your students and 
non-linguist friends to Ask-A-Linguist for answers to their language-
related questions. And now you can also search 65 other linguistic 
and linguistics-related mailing lists from our site. 
	
We hope you feel that these services have already contributed 
significantly to your teaching and research. But we have also been 
hard at work this year implementing innovations and improvements, 
most notably the improvement of the topic-sensitive search engine 
and of the Dissertation Abstracts search engine. In addition, we 
have added The Jobs Information page and, to promote a sense of 
community, The LINGUIST cookbook, in memory of Jim 
McCawley. We have also expanded the book announcement 
service and The Multi-List Archiving Project at 
http://linguistlist.org/list-archives.html .
	
Many of these developments are a result of suggestions from you, 
our subscribers. We asked for your input and you graciously 
responded. And now we ask for your support. If you agree that 
LINGUIST is as useful to the profession as we like to think, please 
respond with a donation. It is only through your support that we can 
pay our student editors and programmers; and the students are 
what keep us in operation. 
	
Eastern Michigan University and Wayne State University support 
us generously with machine maintenance, office space and 
equipment, Internet connections, administrative help, and 2 student 
assistantships. But we have 9 students to fund; and we need 
$35,000 in all to fund them. We have already collected $12,000 
thanks to the generosity of the persons and institutions listed at 
the end of this message. But we must raise the remaining amount 
during this week's fund drive. 
	
Last year 232 subscribers gave us a total of $14,680. This year, 
we hope to persuade many more of our 13,000 subscribers to 
contribute, and to collect $20,000. We also hope to do it in a 
week, so that we do not need to disturb you again and again 
throughout the year with calls for donations. 
	
You can donate by credit card at 
http://linguistlist.org/donation.html 
or you can send a check made out to "The Linguist Editorial 
Support Fund" to:

	The LINGUIST Editorial Support Fund
	c/o Helen Aristar-Dry
	Dept. of English Language and Linguistic
	Eastern Michigan University
	Ypsilanti, MI 48197 

Or you can simply hit "Reply" to this message, make a pledge by 
email, and send your check later.

In return for a donation of $30 or more, we would like to send you a 
snazzy, dark blue LINGUIST T-shirt or sweatshirt. These were a big 
hit at the Linguistic Society of America convention, and many of 
you asked us where you could get one. So click 
http://linguistlist.org/funddrive.html for styles and prices, as well as 
photos of our fashion-conscious staff modeling this oh-so-elegant 
casual attire! And, if you want a T-shirt, be sure to include your 
size, style preference, and a snail-mail address with your check or 
email pledge.

Before closing we would like to express our sincere gratitude to those
who have already sent in a 2000 donation, as well as to those who
stopped by our "office" at the LSA convention and made a
donation. Their names are listed on our website at
http://linguistlist.org/contributors.html . 
	
It was truly heartening to meet you and hear your encouraging words
about LINGUIST.


Thank you in advance for your 2000 donation.

The LINGUIST Staff: Anthony, Andrew, Helen, John, Karen, Scott, 
Jody, Lydia, Naomi, James, Qian, Sudhi, Ljuba