SERIALST Anniversary and Other News Birdie MacLennan 18 Oct 1994 17:08 UTC
Hello. For anyone who is birthday-conscious, SERIALST turned 4 years old about an hour ago. The logs from Oct. 1990 indicate that our first tentative message was sent to the list on Oct. 18, at @ 11:00 EDT. What started as a small, open grassroots kind of forum for sharing serials concerns has turned into a moderated, international forum with more than 1900 subscribers in 32 countries. When the list was first started, I'd envisioned a forum on which to ask for help on some of the most vexing and confounding serials cataloging concerns I was encountering at work. Since most of my best and favorite contacts were miles (hence, long-distance phone calls) from the University of Vermont, electronic communications seemed like the most economical solution to keeping the workflow moving. While on some days I now wonder if SERIALST helps or hinders my overall workflow (that's a grin), it has been gratifying to be able to offer this service, and to be working collectively as a group in building a searchable archive of discussions that addresses some of our day-to-day concerns. Not only do serials cataloging questions get answered, but it's been interesting and useful to learn about other aspects of serials work -- and how these other areas may or may not (yet) tie into my changing workflow patterns and questions in Vermont. Although some of the editorial decisions involved in running the list have not always been easy (and I know some of you have not always agreed with some of our decisions in posting, or not posting messages), we have done our best to run a quality list by adhering to a basic Scope & Purpose statement. I would like to acknowledge SERIALST's Associate Moderators -- Ann Ercelawn (Vanderbilt University) and Marcia Tuttle (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) -- who have given invaluable backup support and advice over the years. As we move toward year 5, I have two requests of subscribers: Please keep your addresses current (for every message that goes out on SERIALST, my listowner account can receive from anywhere from 5 (on good days) to 15 (on bad days) error reports or returned messages for undelivered mail on the same message). My other request is to remember that SERIALST is not a forum for the trade or exchange of duplicate, wanted, or unwanted serials. There was a flurry of discussion last month re. duplicate & exchange services that are offered on the networks. SERIALST is not one of them -- but if anyone wanted to compile a summary listing of freely available networked sources, we would be happy to post (several were noted in last month's SERIALST archives). Finally, I am about to forward to the list (in a separate message) the latest SERIALST Scope & Purpose statement. Generally, this information is posted every other month (or more frequently if the information changes or the editors receive inordinate amounts of off-scope messages). The most important change to note in the latest S&P, is that the address of SERIALST's gopher pathway to its archives has changed slightly. If you use the gopher service to search the archives, please check out the new information. Final and biggest thanks go to SERIALST's subscribers for making the ongoing exchange of information possible on the list during these last 4 years. I leave you with a view of the latest SERIALST subscriber count .... Regards, Birdie MacLennan bmaclenn@uvmvm.bitnet SERIALST Listowner/Moderator bmaclenn@uvmvm.uvm.edu University of Vermont bmaclenn@moose.uvm.edu --------- SERIALST Subscriber Statistics 10/18/94: * Country Subscribers * ------- ----------- * Australia 58 * Austria 1 * Canada 121 * Denmark 2 * Egypt 1 * France 3 * Germany 8 * Great Britain 34 * Greece 1 * Hongkong 9 * Ireland 3 * Israel 8 * Italy 3 * Japan 6 * Korea 1 * Mexico 1 * Netherlands 16 * New Zealand 8 * Norway 1 * Poland 1 * Puerto Rico 1 * Singapore 3 * Slovenia 1 * South Africa 1 * Spain 3 * Sweden 9 * Switzerland 2 * Taiwan 8 * Thailand 1 * USA 1528 * ??? (3]) 1 * ??? 19 * * Total number of "concealed" subscribers: 44 * Total number of users subscribed to the list: 1863 (non-"concealed" only) * Total number of countries represented: 32 (non-"concealed" only) * Total number of local node users on the list: 5 (non-"concealed" only) *