Spring 2009 Volume 17, No. 2 Full-issue Table of Contents follows the headline story at the bottom of this page
Welcome to the Online Newsletter!!!
Editor's Comments
by John C. Kuzenski
After several years of deliberation and many weeks and months of planning, re-planning, dealing with technical issues, receiving great chapter news from across the country and then (usually) re-re-planning, it is my great honor, pleasure and relief to present to you the first "e-copy" of the Pi Sigma Alpha Newsletter. Those who have been keeping up with Society news may remember that the idea to move to an entirely electronic version of the publication was presented to the Executive Council of Pi Sigma Alpha a number of years ago; after contemplating it and studying the feasibility of the idea, there was general support for it as a means of accomplishing several noteworthy goals simultaneously. First, electronic as opposed to print copies of the publication are, of course, cheaper to produce-- saving Pi Sigma Alpha valuable financial resources that will enable it to continue providing a large and impressive level of chapter and member services through its many grant and award programs. Next, environmental factors counseled in favor of an electronic publication. Although the paper Newsletter was by no means one of the most paper-intensive publications ever to hit the presses, its publication schedule of roughly 12 pages of text twice a year, mailed to roughly 700 chapters (also in paper envelopes) became less and less optimal as a "green friendly" business practice given the proliferation of the World Wide Web as a news and information communication medium. Timeliness of news and information also played an important part in the acceptance of an "e-newsletter," given that with traditional print media, editorial deadlines for material ranged from weeks to perhaps even up to a month before the final draft hit the printing presses. This meant that occasionally-- though fortunately, in my experience, not often-- there would be critical or at least useful information that "just missed' the publication deadline for a given issue that would have to wait for the next six months to roll by before it got published-- if it was still timely by that point at all. Finally, a point that was re-enforced by member and advisor surveys conducted by both the Newsletter itself and by the leadership of the Society in 2005 and 2007, respectively, could not be overlooked or under-considered: a noteworthy cross-section of chapter advisors consistently wished they could receive more than three paper copies of the Newsletter to distribute to their student members, and had to send a request for extra copies to the National Office which then had to mail said copies under separate cover with additional time and postage expenses. Some advisors, on the other hand, opined that they received a deluge of professional mail on a daily basis and that it was too easy to overlook the envelope which contained their paper copies of the Newsletter, often leaving it on their desk until the information within that issue's pages was out-of-date or, on occasion, even accidentally throwing away the entire package amidst textbook marketing materials, previously read memoranda from Deans and other matter.
In May, 2008 at its regular annual meeting, the Executive Committee of Pi Sigma Alpha therefore made the final decision to go completely electronic with this venerable, useful publication to address the myriad of disadvantages that were endemic to a paper version of-- well, quite simply-- any information resource in the 21st Century. As Editor, I was charged by the Committee with the responsibility of seeing to the successful transition that lay ahead, though fortunately I was assisted by the very helpful and useful visions of numerous creative and thoughtful colleagues on the Committee and the full Executive Council with respect to the form that the new publication would take in its online form. To the extent that you will now review this publication, use its hyperlinks to flick through the various features, view the full-color pictures and make a mental note of everything that is right or useful about it, I suspect that list will contain a number of things that were the results of this collaborative and collegial creative process. There will be growing pains, however, and technical issues will arise; I faced one such issue in early 2009 with a number of submissions from advisors and members across the country for the "Chapter News" feature contained herein. To spare you many of the hyper-technical details, I will say only that it is easier copying and editing material for a printing press that only one master computer has to lay out to provide a visually perfect image to print than it is to copy, edit and properly format text and photographs that must work properly across computer platforms, browser software, HTML and CS coding, etc.-- and in the process of manipulating some of these data, select contributions to the Chapter News feature for this issue were electronically mangled beyond repair. They do not, therefore, appear in this issue. I apologize to those whose contributions are not included as a result of this glitch, but I certainly hope you will continue the record-breaking level of emailed submissions of chapter news events and photographs for future issues of the Newsletter. We will smooth out the bumps over time, and I, the Society and successive editors, I am sure, will remain devoted to making this the best electronic publication it can be for the benefit of the members of our organization. For now, responsibility for future errors, omissions, navigation problems and so forth remain mine-- and I hope you will not only become a regular consumer of the online Newsletter, but that you will not be shy about contributing your own comments as an end-user of the product regarding how it might be made more user friendly.
In its new form, the Newsletter holds an exciting new range of potential to provide vivid, full-color articles and photographs, hyperlinks to Society and external information resources, animated or other interactive educational or news-related media and other things that will make the task of reading it more exciting and more useful to our members. Welcome again to www.psanews.org.
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