Editorial

Editorial It is with great respect for the tradition of excellence in Dictionaries that I offer this first issue of thejournal under my editorship. I hope that I can come close to the high standards set by my predecessors, Richard Bailey, William Chisholm, and Michael Adams. AU of them have made signal contributions to the profession, and all have taught me, personally , a great deal not only about lexicography, but also about editing itself. The prominence that the journal has in the field and my willingness to take over the editorship are due in great part to their efforts and achievements. Thank you, Dick, Bill, and Michael. In Dictionaries 2006, and in subsequent issues, you will see some of die features you have come to expect: several lengthy, scholarly articles on issues in lexicography and reviews of dictionaries and related works. But I have also decided to open the journal to different ideas and formats. To that end, I have established two new sections: Reference Works in Progress and Working Knowledge. The former will contain excerpts from dictionaries and other reference books currendy in compilation as a way to give the field advance knowledge of emerging work. The latter is a forum, by invitation, for focused discussion of critical issues by practitioners. Both sections have been designed to give thejournal a bit more dynamic and leading-edge character. I invite the reference -work community to send me ideas and proposals for each of these new sections. Given the increasingly thinning line separating types of reference works from one other — especially as a consequence of computerization and multimedia database development — I would like the journal to entertain work from the full range of reference materials: wordbooks, pictorial dictionaries, encyclopedias, thematic key-word lists, dictionaries of symbols, "companions to..." and "handbooks of...," etc. I would hope that potential contributors would think of Dictionaries as a forum for advancing our knowledge of the dictionary, broadly. Again, I invite the community to send me ideas about articles or commentary on any topic that might relate to what our profession as a whole grapples with. I am eager to have the journal open to all sorts of discussions that cut across the field. I see no reason why Dictionaries should not engage in both pedagogical discussion and continuing commentary, where appropriate. If members of the community have had successful, model teaching experiences, I would be interested in considering for publication examples of best practices. If readers are so invigorated by published material that they feel that they must comment on it, and authors have responses to those commentaries, I would be eager to entertain a ContinuingDiscussion section. Dictionaries remains one of the bulwarks of the field. I hope you will help me continue to advance the standard that thejournal so firmly embodies. William Frawley University of Mary Washington ...