The LSA is pleased to announce the appointment of Margaret Thomas (Boston College) as LSA Archivist, for an initial term of three years. Dr. Thomas succeeds Brian Joseph (Ohio State University), who was recently elected Vice President of the LSA.  The Society thanks Dr. Joseph for his many years of service in this capacity, and welcomes Dr. Thomas into this new role. The duties of the LSA Archivist include:

  • Carry out wishes of the Executive Committee with respect to the LSA Archives.
  • Respond to queries from members and others about the Archives, their nature and functions, and related issues.
  • Act as an a liaison between the Western Historical Manuscript Collection staff and both the LSA staff and potential users or contributors to the archives.
  • Make known the nature and usefulness of the LSA Archives collections (through presentations at meetings, participation in workshops, description of the sorts of materials available to scholars in the LSA Archives) and encouraging scholars to work on these.
  • Help LSA position itself on arising issues pertaining to archives and archiving.

In recent years, the LSA Archivist has been instrumental in the launching of “This (time) in Linguistics History” a new feature published on a periodic basis via the LSA website. We invite LSA members to submit their ideas and contributions for future history features. The trigger event for this periodic feature could be an important day, week, month or year in the history of the LSA and/or the field of Linguistics. We are happy to publish as many features as often as LSA members are willing to contribute.