Editor's Note

OEN 44.3 (2013)

 

This issue of Old English Newsletter introduces a new format for on-line publishing. In early 2013, the Editorial Board suggested that the OEN should prepare a more robust digital publishing program. A redesigned site is part of that program.Note We will also be digitizing our past issues, and placing them on-line. Our new series, Old English Publications (in tandem with ACMRS), will also be putting volumes on-line some time after putting them into print.

A wholesale change in focus from print to the internet (with apologies to Elizabeth Eisenstein) presents the OEN with too many unforeseen consequences. Until digital means of presentation permit a fuller engagement with text, we will continue to print two issues a year. In terms of our bibliography, increasongly sophisticated data-mining tools allow us a faster and more thorough collection of bibliographical items, although harnassing those tools intelligently remains a herculean challenge. We invite any qualified coder or hacker to propose an algorithm. But before HAL 9000 takes over our bibliography, we would like to celebrate the best of the best with an annual bibliographical prize. Established by the OEN Board in May 2013, the Carl Berkhout Bibliographical Award is given annually. The 2013 award will be presented at Kalamazoo in early May 2014. Nominations for the 2014 Award are welcome.

Issue 44.3 is edited by Mary Dockray Miller of Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Professor Dockray-Miller has decided to dedicate each year's third issue to Anglo-Saxon in the classroom—literature, language, history, archaeology, and so on. She invites contributions. In the current issue, two contributors, Wendy Hennequin and Jonathan Davis-Secord, consider the challenges of teaching Old English to both undergraduate and graduate students. Tom Bredehoft examines Dobbie's notes in the standard text of Old English poetry, the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. And what we hope will be the first of many such submissions, a wonderful student translation of the Fortunes of Men which developed from an undergraduate course on Old English literature at Wheaton College, MA. A second translation is by a Master's student in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Please submit or encourage your students to submit their translations to OEN.

As a final note, I would like to express my gratitude to the MLA's Old English Division for their charge and their trust. It is an honor to edit the OEN, and I hope that I can manage it half as well as my predecessors. Roy Liuzza's generosity and kindness in showing me the ropes are much appreciated. I am daily astounded at the tremendous work done by a small army of contributors and by Dan Donoghue and Bob Hasenfratz. The OEN relies on the continuing good will of the wider community of Anglo-Saxonists, lay and professional; I invite you to participate in our efforts, and to submit any notes or articles on teaching (issue 3), tools for academic study (issue 1), reports, or notes of general interest.

 

—Stephen Harris, Feast of St. Venantius Fortunatus

Footnotes for articles now sit in this area of the screen.

NOTE: I realize that the vast array of available computer screens and digital devices results in a more limited audience for these redesigned pages. If you are not among that audience, my apologies (I would like to hear from you, though). I tried to optimize the pages for digital tablets and standard desktop and laptop screens.