C18-L's Selected Readings: Volunteer Page

Thanks for volunteering to join the team of erudite and community-spirited people whose generosity makes Selected Readings possible. At some time in the distant past, somebody (we don't remember who it was) in a jocular mood called the team the "Volunteer Fire Department," and it seems to have stuck. Anyway, here are some guidelines and policies and suggestions.

Scope -- Selected Readings lists essays and books dealing with any aspect of the long 18th century (from roughly 1660 to 1830). We are also interested in what was historical in the long 18th century, which means that we are willing to reach back pretty far into the early modern era if some kind of continuity is presented. Selected Readings is an international, interdisciplinary project, so we would love to be able to cover a very wide range of topics. We are also interested in modern revisions of our period, and so we even list historical fiction.

Language -- Selected Readings lists titles in the original language. We tend to assume linguistic competence among our readership, so we do not require translation, though some contributors have provided them.

Article entries -- Please take a look at the format used in any recent issue Selected Readings -- it's a straightforward system -- Singletree, Pierre. "Distractions of the letter W." Journal of Sublunary Investigations, 2, 1 (April 2000): 4697-99.

Book entries -- When listing books, wherever possible please include full bibliographical information and ISBN. For volumes of essays and festschriften, we'd really like all relevant essays listed. They can be broken down into separate listings (especially if only some essays in a collection are relevant) or done as a single long entry.

How to proceed -- just type (or scan or download) your entries and email them to the editor -- bcj@psuvm -- either in an ordinary email message or as an attachment. No HTML mark-up is necessary. There is no deadline -- material received goes into the upcoming issue, which is ordinarily published on or about the 15th of the month (Selected Readings appears on a monthly or bimonthly schedule, depending on constraints on the editor's time).

Your assignment -- you have volunteered to cover a journal or journals. Just work through the table of contents of new issues as they arrive and send us listings. Eventually we'd like to build a comprehensive database and so we would like to have the contents of the past ten years of journals covered.

The Journals Page -- your name should appear beside the title or titles of the journal(s) you have volunteered to cover. Please check to make sure we have an accurate register by visiting the page and searching. Follow this link: The Journals Page. If you wish to expand or discontinue your coverage, please contact the editor. There is no penalty for withdrawing from the project. If you know of journals appropriate to the list, please let us know and we'll add them.

Keywords and abstracts -- some contributors additional material at the end of their entries in square brackets [very, very brief abstracts, names, and keywords that might not be immediately apparent in the title]. At this time we do not maintain a database of searchable keywords, depending instead on the good sense our contributors. This is an extra, not a requirement.

Sections and headings -- your editor only pretends to know everything, and therefore would appreciate some indication about what section an entry ought to be placed in.

Duplications -- some journals have been covered sporadically, and as you work through back issues you may discover they do not need to be relisted. To check, use the Selected Readings Search Engine.

Dissertations -- We would like to list dissertations (some contributors already send some listings). Please include the name of the University and the supervisor (and if possible the Dissertation Abstracts International number).

Book Publishers -- we encourage publishers to send us entries as well. There is no cost for listing your books with us. But for us, scouring new catalogues and typing in relevant entries is prohibitively time-consuming for, and publishers may well already have scanned catalogue or press release copy at hand. Please enquire of the editor, bcj@psu.edu

Editing -- the editor reserves the right to make small editorial adjustments or excisions in volunteer submissions. Some entries may be omitted (generally this only happens if the time period appears to falls too far outside our time-range).

Topic and Disciplinary Areas -- while Selected Readings has always been strong in certain areas (English and French history and literature, History of Medicine) because of the generosity of particular contributors, there have also been marked omissions and absences. We lack representation and coverage from Asia, Latin America, eastern Europe, and several other European cultures and languages. We need stronger coverage in many other areas. Do you know anybody working in under-represented areas? Maybe you could pass the URL for Selected Readings on to them and suggest they might like to volunteer.

Other centuries -- in matters of history, Selected Readings extends its range to 1830. In literature, however, we tend to be selective and even arbitrary. For instance, we tend not to cover the English Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley) except in cases where an author places them in an 18th-century context. We do, however, cover Blake, and in the area of prose fiction we cover Austen and Mary Shelley -- but not Scott. It is the editor's considered opinion that the English Romantic poets are sufficiently covered elsewhere. The "period" dividing lines in other literatures are flexible. At the other end of the long 18th century we are far more flexible, arguing that people at that time were often aware of their place in history and that continuities apply.

send email to Kevin Berland (bcj@psu.edu)

This page was last updated February 8, 2001;

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