Web Magazine for Information Professionals

Mailing Lists: Keeping Up With eLib

We point out the advantages of being on the lis-elib mailing list, and briefly describe the other public eLib mailing lists currently in use.

As mentioned in last issue’s Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) section, a wave of new projects has recently joined the programme. This now takes the number of projects to roughly 60, with the majority of UK universities, and many other research centres, organisations and companies, being involved in at least 1 project (some organisations have a stake in as many as four).

A consequence of this increase is that many people, either directly working within a project, or less centrally as a project deliverable tester or eventual end-user, are interested in how their project and it’s supporting programme develop. Most of the projects overlap with other projects, in some cases very significantly. This leads to much shared interest in the same topics and issues. For example, many of the projects from across the subject areas are interested in copyright legislation as applied to electronic material, as well as Web-based charging mechanisms.

These shared interests can be explored at (physical and virtual) meetings, via the traditional method of email, and the more archaic methods of phone and paper. However, mailing lists come into their own when it comes to easily remotely disseminating and discussing interests such as those raised by the programme. Okay, mailing lists are simple beasts, and appear pedestrian when compared with IRCs or the Collaborate function within Mosaic. However, an email is still quick, can be kept as an (electronic) record or printed, and you don’t have to be in to get them; with mailing lists, you can also send the same email to several thousands of people in one go.

And so to lis-elib. This mailing list currently has around 800 members, and serves as the main email list for the Electronic Libraries Programme. To give you some idea of the traffic on the list; the first month it was running (June 1995), 5 postings were sent to it; for the last full month (April 1996) there were 58 submissions. The list is used to:

You don’t have to be in an eLib project to join and participate in the list; if you are involved in an eLib project, you should be. Lis-elib is a Mailbase mailing list; this has the advantage of being relatively stable, quick to respond and easier to use when compared with other mailing list systems. Mailbase lists also offer some extra functionality…

Other features of lis-elib

As lis-elib is a Mailbase list, there are several additional features available to you:

Joining, contributing to and leaving lis-elib

To join lis-elib, send to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk the email message:
join lis-elib yourfirstname yourlastname
stop

To leave lis-elib, send to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk the email message:
leave lis-elib
stop

To contribute to lis-elib, send your contribution to lis-elib@mailbase.ac.uk. Please:

Other eLib mailing lists

There are several other Mailbase mailing lists connected with the eLib programme you may wish to consider joining, browsing the archives of or submitting to; a list of these is maintained at Mailbase. Amongst these, as of Mid-May 1996, are (with their descriptions):