Oral Tradition

For those who missed it:

We are very pleased to notify you that all 22 years of our journal Oral Tradition are now available online and free of charge at



http://journal.oraltradition.org



This site now contains nearly 500 articles and 10,000 pages, with all of the contents downloadable as pdf files that you can read online or print out as you wish. The entire electronic archive of Oral Tradition is also searchable by keyword or author name, with phrase-based and Boolean searches possible as well.



In return, may we ask you to forward this e-mail announcement to at least five colleagues in your field? It would be especially helpful if you selected colleagues whom you feel might not be aware of Oral Tradition’s migration to an internet-based, open-access format, or who might not already know that the entire run of the journal is now available gratis.



There are also several other ways to assist us with the process of notifying colleagues, and we would greatly appreciate your assistance: electronic links to the site in (1) personal blogs and (2) professional websites, as well as (3) announcements in journals and newsletters in your field. Any or all of these strategies would certainly help to get the news to colleagues on a broad scale.



Thank you for whatever you can do to help inform our community and share a resource that was created for the common good.



The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri (http://oraltradition.org) is gratified to be able to offer Oral Tradition to anyone worldwide with an internet connection and a browser. We hope that the online, open-access format will enlarge and diversify the journal’s readership, and particularly that it will offer everyone interested in the world’s oral traditions – regardless of their location and academic context – an equal opportunity to contribute actively to the discussion. Our shared field will prosper most readily if it operates as an academic democracy without financial or distributional barriers.



As for future contents, the next issue of Oral Tradition (volume 22, number 2) will be a special collection devoted to Basque traditions, and will include descriptive and analytical articles, interviews with oral poets, and an eCompanion with photographic, audio, and video support. Beyond that issue we will be publishing articles on Albanian oral law, Native American storytelling, modern Greek oral poetry, Welsh saints’ lives, modern Balinese epic, and many other topics across the international spectrum.



We welcome your comments and especially your submissions for publication.