1 Introduction

Since the systematic surveys of Moore & Stockman (1981, 1984), the optical linear polarization has been recognized as an important quantity for understanding the nature of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), namely due to the fact that polarization is an indicator of departures from spherical symmetry. This is particularly true for the broad absorption line (BAL) QSOs which appear systematically more polarized than other radio-quiet QSOs.

The new data presented here have been obtained to complement our recent study of BAL QSO polarization (Hutsemékers et al. 1998), as well as to further investigate the discovery of large-scale coherent orientations in the distribution of quasar polarization vectors (Hutsemékers 1998). While the results of these investigations will be published elsewhere (Hutsemékers & Lamy, in preparation), the present paper provides the full set of new polarimetric data, with details on the observations, the data reduction, and the measurements.