cornel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Fred, I think the idea is excellent especially as there is only one state university in Goa. Such a press would also be useful to the many other educational institutions in the country.
Cornel From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" > Why not have a Goa University Press? Perhaps too few people in Goa are aware that we already have the equivalent of a University Press---the Xavier Centre of (for?) Historical Research, a pioneering and prestigious institution that was long led by our own Teotonio, has published an impressive array of volumes dealing with the history, economy, and social structure of Goa. The Centre has also brought together renowned historians from all over the world to interact with our own scholars in major conferences dealing with those very same subjects. The Centre thus has achieved international recognition, and its publications are to be found in libraries around the world. But I must agree with Tony Correia Afonso---our institutions lack the competence that would ensure the uniformly high professional quality and standards one expects in a University Press. On my shelves I have treasured books published by Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; I also own a far greater number of the Xavier Centre's volumes; some would bear comparison with the best in the world. Others are so poorly written, so poorly edited, and so badly proofread that they should not have been issued without drastic revision. Factors to consider: we do not have enough good, professional editors in Goa. Also, almost every writer in Goa believes that his or her work is so good that it needs no editing at all. In an attempt to change this attitude, on a recent visit to Goa I conducted a workshop with Margaret Mascarenhas, under the sponsorship of the Fundacao Oriente, that helped a dozen writers focus on the need to self-edit their own work, and then to have it edited further by someone else before it gets published. All that Margaret and I can do is raise consciousness, and hope that in time, professionalism will find a place in our publishing industry as well. Best regards, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, Porvorim and New Jersey
