LETTER TO THE EDITOR (11/23/03)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

The Weekly reaches a wide audience

Dear Editor:

It is with a great pleasure that I welcome the opportunity to express my gratitude to The Weekly for your recent coverage of the Internet of Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) Project. I am happy to report that the immediate results of your coverage clearly show that the Weekly indeed reaches a wide audience. Since the publication of your first article dedicated to the IEU (October 5), our website has been logged on to by a record number of visitors (the highest ever number of visitors per day was recorded on October 7). Another peak of interest was recorded after the Weekly published a very thoughtful editorial about the IEU and an interview with me in the October 12 issue.

It is interesting to see what entries were most popular among the recent visitors to our site. Apart from such all-time favorites as "Cossacks," "Kyivan Rus,' " "Volodymyr the Great," or "Taras Shevchenko," we have recorded (quite understandably, due to current political controversies) a great interest in such topics as "Kerch Strait" and "Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654."

Although, at this stage of our work, our site contains less than 5 percent of the entire IEU database, I am pleased to see that it is already useful to people trying to obtain objective information about Ukraine. I am convinced that, once completed, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine will be the best source of background (and, in many instances, in-depth) information on any historical topic or current event related to Ukraine and Ukrainians.

I hope that The Weekly's appeals to support the IEU project financially will also reach the hearts and minds of your readers. Without the support of the Ukrainian community in North America, the IEU will not be completed as planned. I would like to remind your readers that income-tax receipts will be issued to all donors in the U.S.A. and Canada. Our address: IEU-CIUS, 450 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E8, Canada.

Marko R. Stech
Toronto

The letter-writer is managing director, CIUS Press, and project manager of the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine.

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