Once upon a time, back in the good old days, there was an AML review archive stretching back at least 20 years, with hundreds of reviews posted by wise and erudite AML members and associates about myriads of books.
And then one day a virus or software update or something came along and devastated the landscape, and the AML review archive was no more. And it was very sad.
Text of the original reviews was rescued, more or less, and now exists in a very messed-up spreadsheet. As time and opportunity allows, AML webmaster (webmistress?) Elizabeth Beeton has been working on abstracting them, one at a time. It takes about a half-hour per review to get them straightened out, which considering how many there are and how relatively low a priority this is (and the untold amounts of money that Elizabeth is NOT being paid to do all of this), means that the pace is understandably slow.
But! If you are an author of one or more old AML reviews, and you still have a copy of them (in electronic form), you can skip all that hassle and send your old reviews to Elizabeth directly, and she will post them in the new archive! Which, I gather, takes much less time than reformatting the text from the old spreadsheet. In this way you help to restore a beloved AML asset, and get your old reviews back in circulation where they will help make you rich and famous! Or something.
To send backup copies of your old reviews, email to ebeeton at kc dot rr dot com.
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This also sounds like a great thing to crowdsource, rather like the Church and Ellis Island records….
The reviews were first printed in AML-list, are the full archives of the listserv available anywhere? I don’t think they are online anywhere, but weren’t they put on CD-Rom at some point? Was a copy given to the BYU library or some other archive?
Poking around, I see AML-list posts from Sept 2006-Oct. 2007 are saved on an xmission website (which is hard to navigate), and I see a few reviews there. Go to https://mailman.xmission.com/lurker/list/aml-list.en.html , and then use the “jump” button to navigate to other months. That was the period that included the end of the email listserv.
Then, from about 2007 to 2010 there was an AML-list message board, which replaced the email list. That does not seem to exist anywhere.
On another note, looking at the BYU Manuscript Collection, I see this entry. “Association of Mormon Letters records. 1976, 4 boxes (2 leaves feet).; 1 carton (1 linear foot). Contributors: Levi Peterson and John Bennion. Contains the corporate records (articles of incorporation, bylaws, tax exemption status documents, list of officers, etc.), select correspondence of officers, membership lists, association newsletters (drafts and final copy) and Internet list serve material.”
https://search.lib.byu.edu/byu/record/lee.2843892?holding=9ydydysvgxwfm1e6
Hey, there are our archives! Including the bylaws, which I had heard existed, but have never seen. Someone should take a look at what is in there. It says 1976, when the organization first started, but it sounds like documents continued to be added to the archive file in later years, since it includes internet list serve material, which is no earlier than 1995. Bennion was president around 1999, it probably goes up to that time.
Oh my goodness.
*plotz*
I’ve added this link to the menu above, under the “about AML” tab.