USA

from: John Rawlings
Stanford University Libraries
Green Library, General Ref Dept
Stanford, CA 94305-6004 USA
rawlings@sulmail.stanford.edu

[I am] Librarian at Green Library, Stanford, responsible for several collections including language and linguistics. In addition to purchase, we would be happy to receive as gifts pidgin/creole material that would be catalogued in union catalogues such as OCLC and RUN, and that could be borrowed by other libraries through interlibrary loan.

Papua New Guinea

from: Edward Wiruk
Pacific Islands Ministries
Private Mail Bag Service
PO Wewak, ESP
PAPUA NEW GUINEA

I am coordinating the PIM literacy programme and work as an Elementary and Literacy Trainer Coordinator. My job is basically training literacy and elementary school teachers, coordinating programmes, supervis-ing teachers and producing materials for both programmes.

This year we have 26 prep schools in operation (using Tok Pisin). One of them is a literacy centre to train teachers for literacy schools in the Hunstein Range area where there is no existence of formal primary education. We are planning to start literacy classes in other areas as well.

Elementary schools [using vernacular languages] are sprouting like mushrooms everywhere but there is a great need to produce necessary materials and secure support to keep them going.
I will be training 15 trainers from 13 March 2000. The purpose is to have supervisors and trainers in the literacy programmes in the Ambunti district.

With assistance from the World Wide Fund for Nature, we will be focusing on the literacy programme within the next five years. I am very glad that something will work out well to assist the bulk of our people.

Netherlands

from: Jacques Arends
University of Amsterdam
Theoretical Linguistics, Spuistraat 210
1012 VT Amsterdam
THE NETHERLANDS
j-arends@hum.uva.nl

Although my main interest in creoles is their historical development, I’m also interested in applied issues. In January 1999, Eithne Carlin (Leiden University) and I organized a semi-popular symposium on “The languages of Suriname”. This one-and-a-half day event, which took place at Leiden University, was specifically designed to be of interest both to academics and non-academics (especially persons with a Surinamese background). The symposium, during which all (ca 15) Suri-namese languages were addressed, drew an audience of well over 100 participants and was widely covered in both local and national media. The organizers are currently editing a book based on the presentations, which is also specifically directed at an academic and non-academic readership. This will be the first book in which all Surinamese languages are dealt with, including the three major creoles (Sranan, Ndyuka and Saramaccan) and their sub-varieties (Boni, Paramaccan, Matawai and Kwinti).