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URANTIA Brotherhood Publications Committee
1982 Report to the General Council

The Publications Committee reports the following activities for each area in which we work:

URANTIA Brotherhood Bulletin

The Fall 1982 issue of the Bulletin will be tri-lingual: the English edition with photographs will be printed as usual, and French and Spanish translations of the text will be inserted for non-English -speaking and bilingual persons on our mailing list. We will evaluate the response; if favorable, we will continue. We hope that this will improve our contact with non-EngIish -speaking readers and encourage them to put themselves on our mailing list. To minimize cost, we hope to use as many volunteer translators as possible and reproduce typewritten inserts on the Brotherhood offset machine. This approach was selected from among various alternatives which the Committee studied and discussed at length over the past three years, including a test French translation project in 1978-79. We considered issuing different editions in each language, but decided it was very important for all on our mailing list to receive the some news from headquarters. The English edition takes two weeks to print, and two-four weeks to mail (bulk rate in the U.S.), so we have four to six weeks to produce the translated inserts. We presented the plan to the International Fellowship Committee--their response was unanimously enthusiastic. The fall international issue will parallel the winter 1981-82 domestic issue. We are collecting reports written by persons from other countries for much of the content of the first tri-lingual issue.

Mark Kulieke continues to serve as managing editor of the Bulletin. Douglas Fraser will serve as Spanish editor and Carol Kostic as French editor when we begin tri-lingual publication. The Publications Committee as a whole plans each issue; Mark, Mike Painter, and I carry out the day-to-day work with the assistance of John and Marian. I heartily thank alI of them for the work they do on the Bulletin. We averaged 3500 copies per quarter last year at a cost of 30 cents per copy including postage. We are still struggling with timeliness problems, but are improving. Timeliness will be critical when we begin tri-lingual publication.

Slide-tape History of the URANTIA Movement

The slide-tape was shown six times this year: the Northeast Conference in Connecticut, First URANTIA Society, Kansas City area conference, regional conference in Atlanta, Midwest Conference in Fort Wayne and First URANTIA Society of Houston. This brings the total number of showings to 12 since August 1980. Approximately 1,000 people have seen it - several more than once. The evaluations continue to average "excellent." We have upgraded the slides, but the original tape remains the same. We have hundreds of specific comments and suggestions on the feedback forms. We will need to do some minor updating and editing but feedback suggests that we should make only minor changes. We still have requests to translate it, to produce a written transcript, and to make it more widely available, but have not acted on these requests. The slide-tape has been shown at no cost to the Brotherhood. We plan to continue to show it as long as we receive requests for it.

Cooperation and Coordination Among URANTIA Movement Publications

In the Fall 1981 Bulletin we published a list of newsletters and journals in the movement This is an on-going service we plan to provide at the request of readers and editors of movement publications. To date, there are 26 periodicals in the movement.

This year we will participate in the summer workshops for the first time; we held workshops at both the 1978 and 1981 General Conferences. Our 1982 seminar on the philosophy, policies, and procedures of movement publications grew out of a request for such a meeting at our last publications workshop. Our workshop on starting and publishing newsletters and journals is similar to the 1978 workshop we conducted. All Publications Committee members are involved in the 1982 summer workshops; I would like to thank Peter Laurence for his help in the conceptualization and development of our committee workshops. These workshops are a big help to us in our own publications and in keeping in touch with the needs of movement publishers.

A new and much-needed project is the development of a URANTIA movement style manual to answer questions which regularly come up when URANTIA Book readers are producing written material. This has been one of Nancy Grimsley's special interests and she will be doing a lot of the work on this project, which we hope to have ready as soon as possible. Nancy is especially helpful since she can represent the viewpoint of someone who must produce written material away from the headquarters. The committee also felt it important to complete such a project while Marian Rowley is still available to help us. French and Spanish editions will undoubtedly be needed too.

Brotherhood Publications

I worked with Marilynn Kulieke of the Special Projects Committee and the other committee chairmen to assemble and integrate the information for the 1982 Summer Workshops. With seven committee participating for the first time, this task was a little more complicated than usual. Mark Kulieke designed and supervised the printing of the workshop folders, as he has in the past.

The committee has a renewed interest in the possibility of making some study aids available and plans to work with the Education Committee during the coming year to determine the advisability and feasibility of study aids, such as the Brotherhood School textbooks which are currently out-of-print. There appears to be a need for us to review and consider Brotherhood policies and procedures concerning tape recording at conferences.

Media Relations

We have a continuing interest in promoting wise media relations and are sponsoring a workshop on media relations this summer.