JWA makes way for a new project...
 
The Journal of World Anthropology (JWA) is being shelved to make room for
a new project, the Anthropological Review Database (ARD).
 
JWA has been a rewarding experience, and it has been our great pleasure to
bring important information to the world through the Internet. But we have
come to realise that we are not creating as effective a resource as we
would like. Production scheduling has been difficult and we have not been
able to make the best use of our time and other resources. Despite the
fact that we were publishing in an electronic format, we seemed to
encounter all the problems and frustrations of a print journal. Along the
way we became aware that there seems to be no readily accessible and
comprehensive source for review infromation. While anthropology is
producing an ever-growing and increasingly varied range of information, to
an rapidly growing number of  scholars, many of the mainstream periodicals
seem to be moving away from publishing this information.
 
The new project will make the most of our established infrastructure and
the Web. We envision ARD as an important, focused resource for the
scholarly community. While we will focus almost exclusively on publishing
reviews, we will cover all audio-visual products, educational multimedia
and computer programs, Web projects, and anything else that seems
worthwhile as well as the more traditional books and films. This will
include recent as well as overlooked, older works.
 
The Web provides an ideal place for this task. ARD will be an extensive,
free, fully searchable and easily accessible online database which will
catalog not just the reviews we generate, but also link the other online
sources of reviews (such as reviews already published in the Journal of
World Anthropology). Ultimately we aim to index what has been published
off-line as well. Once we are well-established, ARD will also develop
complementary resources, such as a list of anthropological publishers,
reviewer biographies, and feature articles on subjects such as trends in
anthropological media.  (Please note, the search engine will not be
installed until our next crop of reviews are complete, in time for the
fall semester.)
 
For those who are interested in contributing or taking part, we are
setting up an editorial review board which will allow us to do a more
complete editorial review process, as well as to channel some of the more
unsual media we receive. And of course we are always seeking more
reviewers, as well as suggestions concerning items we could review.
 
We will continue to post administrative announcements on the Internet,
such as lists of items for review. However, we have changed the name of
our email distribution list from [log in to unmask]  to the
more appropriate [log in to unmask] . If you were subscribed to
JWA, we have already changed over your subscription. If you would like to
subscribe to ARD, please send "SUB ARD" and your full name to
[log in to unmask] , as in the following example:
 
        sub ard Margaret Mead
 
We will continue to announce our progress to the Net, but please visit our
Web site for more information.
 
        http://wings.buffalo.edu/anthropology/ARD
 
Yours truly,
 
        Hugh Jarvis, ARD Editor
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