President's Report 2003

August 1, 2003

Dear Fellows and Members:

It is time again to renew membership in the BRC. We have included a list of publications and an order form if there are any publications you wish to purchase. Let me again draw your attention to the 10% discount on all BRC publications available to Fellows of the Council.

New Programs

There are several new programs that have been put into operation.

First of all, there is the new e-mail address: brc@borneoresearchcouncil.org

Second, we have initiated a new website complete with all the BRC’s information: www.borneoresearchcouncil.org. It has listed on it all of the publications and prices that are offered through the Council. There is also a section where those wanting to find out what other fellows and members are doing can post messages. Perhaps you would like some pointers in developing your research or looking for another scholar. By posting a message on the website, someone may be able to help you out. The website also has posted past yearly reports of the president, printable book order forms, and printable membership invoices. If there are other things that you would like to see on the website, send an e-mail with your suggestions to brc@borneoresearchcouncil.org. Let us know if you have any suggestions. This site will incur a new expense for the Council of about $250 per year.

Also, concerning the website: We would like to link to other websites. The more links to other websites, the more interest we may be able to have in the Council. The link exchange program works like this: if you would like to exchange links with the Council, you may submit a link for approval. Once you submit a link, it will be reviewed to see if it is pertinent to the mission and goals of the Council. Upon approval, the link will appear on the links page on the website and we hope that you post a link to our site on your site as well.

Third, Bob Winzeler is developing an inventory and website of all doctoral dissertations and theses written on Borneo. This will include dissertations in all fields and from all universities provided that the dissertation concerns Borneo to some substantial extent or that it contains substantial information on Borneo. The Website will be hosted by the University of Nevada, Reno, Library's DataWorks at:

http://www.library.unr.edu/dataworks/Borneo/default.html

Please send any comments or suggestions to Bob at winzeler@unr.edu.

Administration

New Address of Clifford Sather

Dr. Clifford Sather
Cultural Anthropology
P. O. Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38 D)
00014 University of Helsinki
FINLAND

e-mail: clifford.sather@helsinki.fi
cliffordsather@hotmail.com

Office Manager: due to large demands on Elizabeth Goudreau's time, Corey Ellis has taken over the job of managing the BRC office full time. He has prepared the website. And he is working on ways to enlarge our membership and sell more of our publications. If you have any suggestions as to how to further carry out either of these, please e-mail him at brc@borneoresearchcouncil.org. He is trying to put together an e-mail list to help keep fellows and members more updated on Council happenings. This will also allow us to remind these people who have forgotten to pay fees for the Council.

Preparation of Manuscripts for Publication: Joan Bubier (Copy Editor) continues to prepare and guide manuscripts through the publishing process. Thank you!!

Relocation of the BRC Office: There was considerable discussion of relocating the BRC office to UNIMAS late last year. Vinson Sutlive, Cliff Sather, and myself looked at this from a variety of angles. We had hoped that in relocating the office there would be additional funding available.

However, this effort came to naught, partially because of recent changes in UNIMAS itself that suggested the BRC would not get sufficient attention.

Any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated!

Funds and Funding

This continues to be a problem. The income and expenses for the year are as follows:

Ordinary Income/Expenses

Income

CONTRIBUTIONS

General Fund: $ 984.79

Endowment Fund Interest: 68.12

Total: $ 1,052.91

FEES

Subscriber Fees 1,611.00

Membership Fees 822.26

Fellows Fees 2,088.51

Other Fees 5.00

Total FEES $ 4,526.77

SALES

Sale of Monographs 2,758.84

Sale of Proceedings 2,019.00

Sale of Occasional Papers 240.00

Sale of Misc. Publications 927.72

Book Orders $ 7,395.64

Total Income $12,975.32

Expense

Credit Card Service Change $ 377.32

Office Supplies 802.10

Phone Expenses 52.34

Postage and Shipping 2,088.41

Publishing - "Evans’s Diaries" 6,749.35

Publishing - Bulletin 3,314.19

Total Expenses $13,383.71

Net Income (LOSS) $ (408.39)

The Endowment is currently: $2,114.27.

The Endowment is held in a Vanguard Money Market Fund.

This list of income and expenses does not include any costs of office personnel.

As you can see, the Council is still struggling financially. This past year, the Council published only one book along with the Bulletin. With increased contributions, we will be able to continue and expand our publishing program. If there are any suggestions on how to increase our funds and funding, we would be delighted to hear them. If there are any known grants available for such, please notify us and we will pursue them.

Annual financial reports for the Internal Revenue Service are prepared by Sean T. O'Hare, CPA.

Inventory of Publications

We have a large inventory of publications. If we could sell more of these, we could use this cash to finance future publications. Any ideas on how to do this?

Present Volunteers

The BRC's ability to generate scholarly work is because of the volunteer efforts of various Fellows and Members of the BRC. Vinson Sutlive continues overseeing the work of the BRC and has been instrumental in maintaining the Biennial Conferences.

Cliff Sather has devoted much of his time to the editorship of the Borneo Research Bulletin. This is a hard, time consuming job, but which has its rewards in the response of those who read the Bulletin and find this material useful in their own research.

Phil Thomas takes the materials that Cliff provides for the Bulletin and prepares them for publication. Again, this is a difficult job, and we are very grateful both to Phil and Cliff keeping the publication of the Bulletin going and with such intellectual rigor.

Jacqueline Kitingan Pugh spent many weeks working to organize the 2002 Biennial Conference at UMS in Kota Kinabalu. And it was a glorious success. We want to express our thanks to her for presenting an exciting and productive conference.

Jacquie is now busy preparing the proceedings from the conference for publication in our proceedings series.

Additional Volunteers Needed

We need more volunteers to help in the running of the BRC! Let me suggest certain jobs that need to be done in the hopes that we can get some volunteers to undertake these.

1. Permanent Head of the Biennial Conference: This would include finding a new site and the personnel to run the new site every two years.

2. Book Review Editor: Identifying books to be reviewed and locating reviewers.

3. General Editors for the Monographs, the Proceedings, and/or the Occasional Papers: This job could be split between three persons. In each case it would include soliciting and locating new manuscripts as well as taking a first editorial reading and preparation of the manuscript.

4. Current Bibliography: Someone is needed to take charge of listing new publications. This effort could be merged with that of the Book Review Editor.

5. Publication Distribution: An increase in the distribution of our publications is badly needed. We need someone who might man tables at various association meetings, as Vinson did in the past. And part of the job would be to find ways of getting a larger distribution of our publications.

2004 Biennial Conference

In discussions between Vinson Sutlive, myself, and Datuk Amar Linggi it was decided not to hold the 2004 Conference as we had hoped in Kalimantan. The political situation and problems of health just did not seem to be favorable to holding such a Conference.

As a result, there are no plans for a 2004 Conference. As of now we have not had any hard invitations from any other region of SEA to host this conference.

Publications

Recent Publications:

I. H. N. Evans Bornean Diaries 1938-1942, A. V. M. Horton, Editor. Borneo Research Council Monograph No. 6. 2002. $55.00.

Future Publications

Monographs:

Journeys of the Soul: Anthropological Studies of Death, Burial, and Reburial Practices in Borneo, W. D. Wilder, Editor.

Proceedings:

Language Issues in Borneo; Selected Papers from the Third Biennial Conference of the Borneo Research Council, Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, July 1994. Peter Martin, Editor.

Language in Borneo: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Borneo Research Council, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, June 10-15, 1996. Peter Sercombe, Editor.

Occasional Papers

Fishing, Hunting and Headhunting in the Former Culture of the Ngaju Dayak in Central Kalimantan. A. H. Klokke, Editor and Translator.

Other Publications:

The BRC has other internal publications which members and fellows may purchase. These are:

Index of all issues of the Bulletin on a diskette: US$20.00

Complete Membership List: US$ 3.00

Policies on management of the Council: US$ 3.00

Style Sheet for Monographs and Occasional Papers: No charge

New Members and Fellows

The Council has a policy of welcoming new Fellows and Members by letter and sending the last issue of the Bulletin to let them know that they are logged in as Fellows or Members.

Mailings

We have found in one case that a mailing arrived completely mangled so that the addressee could not be read. Please let us know if you have had difficulty with our mailings and give us suggestions on how to improve this.

Mailing Costs

The U.S. Postal Service continues to increase its rate for shipping overseas. Also, some of the larger shipments that we have made to places overseas have become lost, and replacing these adds to the mailing costs.

As the Council subsidizes the costs of each of its publications, it has been necessary to raise shipping rates for overseas.

Shipping and handling charges for volumes shipped overseas surface mail is now $8.00 with $3.00 for each additional publication.

Contributions

During the past year the following individuals have made contributions to the BRC, for which we want to deeply express our gratitude.

2002 Contributors to the Endowment Fund

Dr. Gale Dixon, Mr. James McLellan, Dr. Clare Boulanger, Dr. Amity Doolittle, Mr. Patrick Cassels, Mrs. Laura Appell-Warren, Dr. Michael R. Dove, Professor H. Arlo Nimmo, Dr. Reed Wadley, Dr. W. D. Wilder, Ms. E. Kim Adams, Mr. Ralph Arbus, Dr. Carol Warren, Dr. Allen Maxwell, Dr. Jay B. Crain.

2002 Contributors to the General Fund

Professor Virginia Hooker, Dr. Clare Boulanger, Dr. Yoshiyuki Kiyono, Dr. Amity Doolittle, Mrs. Laura Appell-Warren, Professor Ian Douglas, Dr. Jack Stuster, Dr. Gale Dixon, Dr. Michael R. Dove, Dr. Bernard Sellato, Ms. Vicki Pearson-Rounds, Professor F. Andrew Smith, Dr. Leigh Wright, Dr. W. D. Wilder, Dr. Otto Doering, Dr. Graham Saunders, Dr. Carol J. Colfer, Mr. Ralph Arbus, Dr. Phillips Thomas, Dr. Carol Warren, Dr. Anne Schiller, Dr. Rodney Needham, Dr. Martin Baier, Dorothy Chin, Mr. Chew Lun Chan, Dr. George N. Appell, Mrs. Laura W. R. Appell.

Visitors to the BRC Office

It is always with great pleasure to have visitors to the BRC office. This past year visitors have included: Betony Jones, ethnobotanist, Yale University, Research Associate, Sabah Oral Literature Project.

Sincerely yours,

George N. Appell, Ph.D.
President