LINGUIST List 3.988

Mon 14 Dec 1992

FYI: Proposed Policy Change on LINGUIST

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1. The Linguist List, FYI: Proposed policy change

Several times in the past year, we have been asked whether
announcements of new linguistics books can be posted on LINGUIST.
It has previously been our policy to announce only non-profit
publications such as working papers. We established this policy
primarily because we weren't sure that promotion of commercial products
was allowable on the Internet. But in the last few months we have
discovered that the Internet guidelines encourage the dissemination of
scholarly information "from both non-profit and for profit vendors." We
believe many subscribers would like to hear of new books in their
fields, so we are thinking of posting _brief_ listings of new books
each month.

In order to control the volume of messages, we propose to announce each
book once, and only once, in the month of its publication.
And, because far too many commercial publishers may occasionally have a
new book that is at least peripherally relevant to someone in our
diverse audience, we intend to confine ourselves to announcing books
from "core" linguistics publishers who have formally agreed to our guidelines.

If we go forward with this, the announcement itself will be limited
to bibliographic information plus 3 lines of description. Price will
be included because it is useful in differentiating books intended
primarily for libraries from those intended for the individual scholar.
And, for the convenience of subscribers, either the publisher's phone
number or e-mail address will also be listed. No other ordering information
will be included in the announcement, although additional information
may be retrievable from the Listserv. Issues containing book announcements
will be clearly headed "New Books" so that uninterested scholars can
delete these from the message header.

The scheme will increase the number of LINGUIST messages, but probably
by only 1 or 2 messages a month. And it should also increase our
awareness of new publications in our field. Eventually, we would like
to post brief reviews of these books, since talking about books is a
potentially productive way of extending academic discussion on the net.

We'd like to try posting book announcements in 1993 and see what
impact, if any, this has on LINGUIST. But, as always, we are
soliciting subscriber input before instituting a new policy.
So please let us have your opinions about the idea sketched above.

Our thanks!

Helen & Anthony