With this volume in honour of Don Walker, Linguistica Computazionale
con- tinues the series of special issues dedicated to outstanding
personalities who have made a significant contribution to the progress
of our discipline and maintained a special collaborative relationship
with our Institute in Pisa. I take the liberty of quoting in this
preface some of the initiatives Pisa and Don Walker have jointly
promoted and developed during our collaboration, because I think that
they might serve to illustrate some outstanding features of Don's
personality, in particular his capacity for identifying areas of
potential convergence among the different scientific communities within
our field and establishing concrete forms of coop- eration. These
initiatives also testify to his continuous and untiring work, dedi-
cated to putting people into contact and opening up communication
between them, collecting and disseminating information, knowledge and
resources, and creating shareable basic infrastructures needed for
progress in our field. Our collaboration began within the Linguistics in
Documentation group of the FID and continued in the framework of the
!CCL (International Committee for Computational Linguistics). In 1982
this collaboration was strengthened when, at CO LING in Prague, I was
invited by Don to join him in the organization of a series of workshops
with participants of the various communities interested in the study,
development, and use of computational lexica.
