Saturday, July 22, 2006

Where's the festschrift ?

So my vocabulary word for the day is Festschrift. From wikipedia:

"In academia, a Festschrift; plural, Festschriften, is a book honouring a respected academic. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication. A Festschrift contains original contributions by the so-honoured academic's close colleagues, often including their former doctoral students. It is typically published on the occasion of an anniversary. A Festschrift can be anything from a slim volume to a work in several volumes. It often includes important contributions to scholarship or science."

How did I come upon this word? As I was perusing the net for ant keys and whatnot, I came upon an announcement in Notes from Underground stating that a festschrift would be coming "this summer" entitled Advances in Ant Systematics and published by the Memoirs of the Entomological Institute. The announcement does not state who the festschrift is in celebration of. It does have a list of titles, though, many of which look awesomely helpful (to me). They include a revision of Wasmannia, an identification guide to Gnamptogenys in the Americas, and an article entitled "How to conduct large taxonomic revisions in Formicidae." I would kill to get my hands on the first two papers right now. And then there is a paper on a new genus from the southwest us which apparently is very similar to something i found in ecuador -- which is really interesting. Too bad it hasn't been published. "This summer," by the way, was 2005, and still no word about when this thing is going to get published. I actually emailed a couple of people about it but never received any reply. Very frustrating. Does anyone know anything about this? I would love to know.

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