The EAGLES Spoken Language Group was established in 1993 within the EAGLES project, sponsored by the CEU's DGXIII, under the chairmanship of Roger Moore (DRA, UK), hosted by Richard Winski (Vocalis Ltd., UK), with Dafydd Gibbon (University of Bielefeld, Germany) as technical editor. In consultation with a representative Core Group including Giuseppe Castagneri, Jean-Marc Dolmazon, Norman Fraser, Jock McNaught, Louis Pols and Hans Tillmann, a significant policy decision was made at an early stage to aim for a fully fledged high quality ``Handbook of Spoken Language Standards and Resources'' as the group's result, over and above the basic technical report originally envisaged. At a later stage in the project, the additional goal of producing a hypertext version of the Handbook was adopted.
The rationale behind this decision was that despite the additional non-financed effort involved on the part of authors and editors, a carefully produced and professionally disseminated handbook would be of more value to the spoken language community in the medium and long term than a more informal document, and that a flexible dissemination policy simultaneously using paper and hypertext electronic media would provide maximum added value to the individual reader, both at the laboratory workbench and in other working environments.
This brief overview is intended to provide the spoken language community with information about goals, authorship, content and the dissemination procedure for the Handbook.