Dear all, 
 
Those of you with very sharp eyes will have noticed the following 
resolution, adopted at the annual meeting of 2005, in the LSA Bulletin 
(No. 187, March 2005, p. 6): 
 
"Whereas there are few institutional norms about how to recognize 
electronic databases in tenure and promotion cases, the Linguistic 
Society of America supports the recognition of electronic databases of 
language material as academic publications. It supports the 
development of appropriate means of review of such resources so 
that the functionality, import and scope of the projects can be 
assessed relative to other language resources and to theoretical 
papers. The LSA supports the treatment of digital resources as 
publications for consideration in tenure and promotion cases." 
 
This resolution originated in the Conversation on Endangered 
Languages Archiving, chaired by Louanna Furbee and sponsored by 
the LSA and the National Science Foundation, and was then adopted 
by the LSA Executive Committee. It is a small but significant step in 
achieving appropriate recognition for the large amount of work that 
goes into, and utility derived from linguistic data in electronic form. It 
would be good to hear from linguists who are able to make use of this 
LSA resolution for their own work. 
 
Doug Whalen DhW 
-- 
Douglas H. Whalen 
Vice President of Research 
Haskins Laboratories 
THE SCIENCE OF THE SPOKEN AND WRITTEN WORD