[Bell Historians] Library Committee's learned journal

[Willbutler at a...]

Carl Zimmerman wrote: 
"The disadvantage of publishing on the Web is that web-sites (or pages within 
them) can be all too transient."

One of the Library Committee's objective is to disseminate information about 
bells and ringing as widely as possible and also to preserve it for future 
generations. We see a learned journal as doing this. We have the resources to 
publish and see it as our responsibility to do so.

Anne Willis wrote:

"If such a journal is produced, what are the publishing criteria going to be? 
Are the articles going to be properly refereed, edited and proof-read? If so, 
who is going to do this? Will it be acceptable?

I see my job as chairman of the committee is to solicit articles which will 
then be sent to two independent referees not connected with the committee. 
These will be chosen from amongst some of the eminent members of the Bell 
Historians Group. The editor, John Eisel, will prepare the material for the 
press, oversee the proof-reading and check that the author is satisfied with 
the result. 

We see the hard-backed journal being published about once a year, A4 in size 
and about 100 pages long. It would contain abour eight major articles with 
photos and diagrams, with shorter articles used as fillers. 

I have had it implied that the learned journal is an excuse for members of 
the committee to get their own work published; any articles submitted by them 
would have to go through referees similar to that of any other author and 
compete for space. 

Another suggestion is that publication of the journal will mean that the 
Ringing World would lose out on the articles. How about the articles that are 
published on the Web? Has the RW lost out on these? We think that articles of 
a generalist nature should be sent to to he RW; we want to publish 
information that is of a more specialist nature and perhaps too long to be 
accepted by the RW. Does the fact that there are only 100 members subscribing 
to this group indicate that there is very little general interest in the 
subject? I suggest that the majority of the readers of the RW are practical 
ringers and (generally) only interested in that aspect of the art

I hope I have cleared up some of the apprehensions voiced to me in personal 
e-mails and letters over the last few months. I apologise for the delay in 
replying to these; I had to take some of the points to the committee meeting 
which was postponed and only held last week.

If I can help any more please ask.

Bill Butler


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