CHIEF EDITOR'S REPORT
Summer 1999

We are delighted that Dr. Ratna Lahiri, a noted scholar in the area of languages and literature and a long-time associate of the EH Project, has agreed to join the Columbia office to review and edit articles as well as coordinate the assignment of articles and communication with editors and authors in India as well as around the world. She is taking leave from her position teaching at the University of Delhi to work intensively with the EH Project. Her contributions are greatly appreciated; we look forward to a long and fruitful association.

Dr. K.R. Sundararajan, Professor of Theology at St. Bonaventure University, continues to work for EH offices in Columbia while taking care of his teaching responsibilities in western New York state. He dedicates himself to the work of the EH for long hours from Thursday through Monday each week, and then flies back to teach his classes. His commitment to this work is truly remarkable and the EH would be hard pressed to proceed without his steady hand.

Also of great help to the work of the EH project are our Graduate Assistant student staff. The University of South Carolina, Religious Studies Department has, for several years, provided us with graduate assistant students who work at the EH Columbia office in a variety of capacities including copy editing, typing of hand-written articles, and filing and managing the growing collection of articles. The students are paid a stipend by the University and given a reduction in their tuition in return for their work for us.

This arrangement also provides these students of Religious Studies with an excellent opportunity to read articles on the Hindu Religious Traditions. They are eager to work for the EH project as they can endeavor to understand more fully of the vast wealth of knowledge that passes through their hands during their work responsibilities.

The collection of articles advancing

The articles which are still received in hand-written or typewritten form are typed (re-typed) by our Graduate Assistants into the computers and entered into the growing file base of EH articles.

The Columbia office maintains a dual filing system. The printed copies of the articles are placed in file folders and kept in alphabetic order in the filing area of the Columbia EH offices. Then, for every printed article, there must be an electronic version created and kept in the computer system. This electronic filing system is also carefully maintained. Articles are filed first as the originals are received, in a general folder for "Original". They are further sub-divided into the respective twelve subject areas. When an article has been edited, a copy of the edited version is placed in the "Edited" electronic folder. The original article is always kept and not replaced by the edited version, so that should any question arise regarding the editing that was done, the original may still be checked.

The maintenance of this massive collection of electronic versions of the articles, along with the database which tracks the progress of each article, was designed and created and is overseen by the always able and knowledgeable Girish Yanik, Operations Manager. He is also assisted in this work by gifted students from the Computer Sciences department of the University.

Difficulties to be overcome

The EH also submitted a Grant Application to the NEH Foundation. But we were not one of the lucky few to receive a grant.

It has also proved difficult for the many authors writing for the EH to complete their writing commitments to the EH, along with the many other responsibilities of their careers. So the writing of the 10,000 plus planned articles is not proceeding with as great a speed as we had anticipated it would.

Plans for the future