25.2050, All: The LINGUIST List Relocation and Final Fund-Drive Call

[The LINGUIST List]

Dear LINGUIST List subscribers and supporters,

as some of you might have heard, The LINGUIST List is moving this summer. It is not moving just to a new building or office space. It is moving to a new state and a new institution. We are all very sad to leave EMU and Michigan. LINGUIST had a very good and successful time at EMU. For those of you who know LINGUIST from these EMU years, or are curious about what it looked like, we will publish a special Blog issue on that this week, and announce it on various social media sites. We are grateful for all the support and help that LINGUIST got from the local colleagues, the English Department, the administration and various other institutions at EMU. We are all wiping the tears from at least one eye. Gone is the view to the Huron river, the deer passing by our office windows, the woodchuck in the grass, and all the other advantages of an office so close to nature. Gone? Maybe not... Wait! Where is LINGUIST going?

I am happy to announce that LINGUIST has found a new place. The LINGUIST List is going Hoosier! Yes, that is right.  (For a short time we might want to consider adding a specific bird to our logo and website...  )

But, note that we are about to close the fund-drive for this year. For the last time this year - I promise - I ask you to consider supporting The LINGUIST List with a donation. This is probably your last opportunity this year to change the outcome of the Grad School, Subfield or Country Challenge 2014 and get one of the cool LINGUIST premiums. Please have a look at the 2014 Fund -Drive page:

http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2014/

You will of course have the opportunity to donate to LINGUIST List outside of the Fund-Drive activities by just going to the donation page:

http://linguistlist.org/donation/

Some of you might be wondering what is happening with the funds, and what LINGUIST List uses them for.

Here is a general explanation of the usage:

The donations are used to pay our student editors, and only them. They are NOT used to pay anybody else, not the programmer, not the moderator(s) or managers and faculty volunteers.

The student editors are currently Anna White, Bryn Hauk, Danuta Allen, Mateja Schuck, Sara Couture, Sarah Fox, Uliana Kazagasheva, Xiyan Wang, Alex Isotalo, Andrew Lamont.

During the summer, they do not receive any income from their GA-ships or other sources. We need to sponsor them with an hourly payment for their editing job. During the semester we have to cover the GA-ship for the ones who are not supported from the department, university or otherwise. And, I hope that you agree with me, we have a group of extremely talented and professional student editors. We are absolutely happy to have them with us, and LINGUIST can be happy to have such a talented and motivated editing team.

But, LINGUIST will need help and support right now, more than ever.

As I mentioned above, LINGUIST is going Hoosier, or to be more precise, we are moving to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. When we say “we”, this means, some of the student editors will join us, as well as Lwin Moe, a former linguist from IU, and our current programmer for some of the projects and the new website developer; and Malgosia and me are on the move too. This move is very complicated, it requires a lot of work and effort. We are glad that some of our editors are willing to help us to rebuild a new LINGUIST List at IU. We are extremely grateful for the support from both institutions, EMU and IU. We are sorry to move further away from our local colleagues at all the Michigan Universities, and we are glad to be closer to our colleagues, friends and supporters at IU in Bloomington. (But, we are glad to have this cyber-infrastructure and internet service to be - virtually at least - close to all of you.)

At the same time, the Reviews-team of LINGUIST will change. We will send out a separate announcement about that soon.

I hope that you all understand better now that we really need your support. We will need to pay the students to help us during the summer. We will need to train and hire a new student editors team. And, we will need your understanding too. There will surely be some delays, problems, mistakes, technical issues, which we will try to minimize, and we ask for your patience while we move.

We are migrating part of the technical operations to a new platform. Some servers will have to be set up and reconfigured at the new location. The processes and the online interface are being redesigned completely, and, and, and...

Please, if you can, do consider donating to The LINGUIST List and help us manage this big change at a new location, with new technology, with a new design and functionality, and with some of our old team members and a new team in Bloomington.

http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2014/

Thank you all for your support!

Best wishes

Damir
(Moderator of The LINGUIST List)