AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter
February 9, 1998
Following discussions at the International Congress of Asian and North African Studies (ICANAS) in Budapest (June, 1997) and subsequent e-mail correspondence, a new electronic newsletter is being initiated. Its purpose is to support scholars, librarians, and researchers world-wide who are developing text or image databases in the various fields of Asian/EurAsian Studies or who are incorporating materials in Asian languages into larger databases, and to promote better communication among them. Entitled AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter, it will be published quarterly (March, June, September, December) on the WWW.
AsianDOC (Asian Database Online Community) takes its name from a mailing list which was initiated at the 1993 ICANAS in Hong Kong. In its early days it helped foster a sense of community among isolated scholars developing electronic resources for Asian and EurAsian Studies.
The use of a web e-newsletter will be tried out on an experimental basis initially, with the first issue to be out before the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Washington (26-29 March 1998) and the second by the International Congress of Asian Scholars in Noordwijkerhout (25-28 June 1998). Discussion of the experimental issues will be on the agenda of the AAS Working Group for Electronic Resource Development (evening of 28 June 1998) and as well as at a special Meeting in Conjunction at ICAS (Discussion Forum: Building an International Community of Scholars Engaged in Developing Electronic Resources for Asian Studies).
This initiative came about as a result of e-mail correspondence late in 1997 chiefly among Maureen Donovan (Ohio State University / Listowner, AsianDOC mailing list), Jost Gippert (Universitaet Frankfurt / Chairperson, Scholars Engaged in Electronic Resources (SEER)), Lewis Lancaster (University of California, Berkeley / Chairperson, AAS Working Group on Electronic Resource Development (AAS WGERD) ), and Susan Whitfield (British Library / Director, International Dunhuang Project). AsianDOC -- both the e-newsletter and the mailing list -- will serve as communications media for SEER and AAS WGERD.
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CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS:
This is a call for contributors and volunteers. Please send in material for the newsletter -- or volunteer to participate by coordinateing a section of the newsletter, running an interest group, or writing a regular column! Make this e-newsletter a success! See below for details about the proposed scope.
Maureen Donovan**********************************
SCOPE:
AsianDOC will be divided into the following sections:
1) News/Updates of Database Projects and Other Initiatives --
Brief abstracts of projects with URLs pointing to web sites; updates of
progress being made on ongoing projects.
2) Conferences/Meetings --
Announcements and reports of interest to this community; also URLs to
related web sites.
3) Technical Information/Commentary--
Information/tutorials/FAQs on methodologies and techniques for developing
electronic resources for Asian Studies. Also, information about trends in
international standards; compatibility; interoperability; encoding, etc.
Also, pointers to web sites with more in-depth information.
4) Reviews--
Software; books; journals; journal articles; web sites; etc.
5) Interest Groups --
Columns devoted to areas of special interest (image processing; SGML; 4D;
unicode; mapping; transliteration; outreach; etc) or reports/updates from
representatives of groups interested in those areas.
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POLICY and STYLESHEET:
1) All correspondence and submissions should be sent to the Editor (marked ASIANDOC in the email header) at the following email address:
donovan.1@osu.edu (Maureen Donovan)
2) Deadlines for copy are: February 28 (for the March issue) and May 30 (for the June issue).
3) A stylesheet will be developed during the experimental phase of the first two issues, to be discussed at the AAS WGERD and ICAS open meetings (see above).
4) Submissions which are already tagged in HTML are preferred. E-mail attachments should be sent as plain/RTF (non-proprietary) text files. Images should be in GIF or JPEG formats. Exceptions should be discussed with the editor prior to submission.
5) Only signed contributions will be published.
6) The language of contributions is not limited, but English is preferred. (Volunteers to help with editing various foreign languages are needed.)
7) Advertising will not be carried, at least in the first two issues. Contributors who represent commercial companies should not advertise their products in material submitted to AsianDOC.
8) The editor will make all final decisions on what to publish/what not to publish, and reserves the right to edit all material submitted for publication. It is expected that an editorial board will be established at the AAS WGERD and ICAS meetings and procedures for review of submissions will be established during those meetings.
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AsianDOC MAILING LIST:
The Asiandoc mailing list will continue and will serve as a discussion forum for issues raised in the newsletter, as well as business related to the work of AAS WGERD and SEER. Here are the instructions for subscribing to Asiandoc:
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Send an e-mail, leaving the subject line blank, to:
listserver@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
In the text of your message (not the subject line), write:
subscribe asiandoc firstname lastname
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Subscribing to the mailing list is not necessary to receive the
e-newsletter, which will be published on the WWW.
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