Editor's Notes

The Autumn 1998 issue of IASIL Newsletter, though promised in Limerick, never materialised. In that period I was given unsolicited leave to finish a book and simultaneously transferred to new offices, losing touch for some time with the electronic contexts in which much editorial hunting-gathering goes on. Under these circumstances it was impossible to keep that promise. For this I direct my apologies particularly towards our Chairman Michael Kenneally who put in so much work advancing the Association in the same period.

On returning to post in January, it was a cause of amazement how much material had amassed in the computer directories, cardboard boxes and old-fashioned scrapbooks that do service as repositories for the impending Newsletter. The greatest portion of this welter unquestionably comes from the Internet these days, and of that no mean share from the Irish-studies list run by Johann Norstedt and Robert Brinlee, as well as from the scholarly and dynamic Diaspora that Patrick O'Sullivan in Bradford has been conducting in Bradford for a year now. ModBrits, Local Web, ReadIreland and the Irish Emigrant Publications of the amazing Ferries-whose praise I never cease to sing-are all important sites of living bibliography and related matters. Add to this the correspondence of IASIL Members and others-now running at hundreds of messages a month-and the volume of information begins to seem unmanageable. In the end, however, it is the labour of translating such material from the web into wordprocessed copy and then into publication format using DTP that constitutes the greatest drain on time and energy-especially where incompatible software is involved (as it so often is). Such baffling constraints have led me to adopt the method of publishing the Newsletter first on the Web and afterwards preparing a hard-copy version for postal circulation. Once embarked on this new course, it shortly became obvious that the Newsletter ought to function primarily as an online notice-board, keeping the membership and others au courant without resorting to the printing house. On April 1st 1999, I placed the Newsletter in very much its present form on the IASIL Website at http://www.ulst.ac.uk/iasil/ & pages, though-in deference to the fact that no self-respecting editor wants his production to be associated with that inauspicious day-I took the liberty of dating the publication "March 1999" on the Contents page. At this juncture the Newsletter effectively became an internet publication and was greeted as such by the 300 members to whom I sent messages announcing its appearance.

That is not to say that I have abandoned the idea of printed publication-as the copy in your hand adequated proves. On the contrary, I intend to release a second, pre-Conference, issue later this year containing the Barcelona programme and further notices devoted to literary publishing events and members' news. While the current issue incorporates a "Selected Bibliographical of Irish Studies" for 1998, the ensuing one will provide the roll-call of novels, poetry collections, and plays issued by Irish authors during 1998-99 up to the date of publication. In this way the IASIL Newsletter will continue to offer an archival record of Irish writing both on the creative and the scholarly fronts. Henceforth, moreover, I plan to exploit the flexibility of the web in continuing to upload new articles and notices to the current volume as if the two issues were in fact identical. Only at the end of the year will I close the current directory and transfer the files to the Newsletter Archive. Past issues have already been assigned to the "IASIL Newsletter Archive" in this way, and stand there under the IASIL Web pages available to access. A search engine will be added shortly to make the process more worthwhile. The bibliographical records for 1996 and 1997 located in other directories of the IASIL web are already searchable in this way-in partial fulfilment of the techno-promises I made to the membership when I first launched the web page.

One of the manifest delights of Web publishing is the ease with which colour graphics can be posted-though it can be less fun to downloaded. them. It naturally calls for consideable practice in hypertext skills to get the professional look that so many web pages in Irish studies display these days-usually with professional assistance. Several years attempting this at my own workstation suggest to me that this way madness lies. Accordingly I ask you to be content with plain text, chastely displayed against a magnolia background on your screen. (If the screen is any other colour, don't blame me.) If this sounds disappointing, I am happy to say that help is on the way with the arrival of the Informatics Officer shortly to be engaged on the Princess Grace Irish Library's EIRData 2000 project at the University of Ulster. From that time forth I expect to find myself in a position to borrow hi-tech skills adequate to rival the best web-masters in the known universe.

Many will be aware that I have been serving for some time now as Literary Adviser to the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco, with implications for this Newsletter which I would like to lay before the membership. IASIL Secretaries come and go. At the same time, I would like to provide a continuing service to the Association in the form of a bulletin comparable to the present one [only better - Sub-Ed.], relying on assistance from the Library's extremely able staff. With the assent of the Trustees of the Library, I therefore propose that the PGIL Bulletin and Literary Reporter that I plan to produce should be circulated to IASIL members as part of their subscription entitlement. It will then fall to the next IASIL Secretary to issue a Newsletter on her/his own account-or else to supply material for inclusion in the Library's bulletin if this is thought preferable or convenient by the membership and Executive.

These are notions that naturally occur to me when considering the best way of handling the economy of information within Irish literary studies from the standpoint of IASIL and its members' needs. Besides needs, however, IASIL has its products and its resources Already the accumulated Annual Bibliographies of IASIL constitute a necessary "first stop" for the researcher, while our by-now extensive shelf of Conference Proceedings amount to a compendious library of documentation, analysis, and judgement on Irish writing. All of these should now be made available electronically as far as possible, though obviously access to the full publications is only appropriate at the table of contents and index level, given the issues of copyright for authors and publishers involved. It is several years since I first suggested to IASIL that these materials should be converted to electronic use wherever possible. Now, with the launch of Eirdata 2000, this has become a definite possibility, and I intend to specify it as a goal for Year One to provide a good measure of the contents of the IASIL Annual bibliography in a searchable online context-subject again to the agreement of the membership and the Executive. I hope therefore that the IASIL membership will warm to the idea of a friendly and productive association between the Association and the Princess Grace Irish Library in regard to these matters, and that you will accept my proposal as an expression of continuing enthusiasm for the future of IASIL and the fulfilment of its chartered aspirations.

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Bruce Stewart/The Editor
IASIL Newsletter