Dear Austin
I sent the following email to Gerard last year, but it gained no response
Regards
Martin
Martin White
Managing Director
Intranet Focus Ltd
12 Allcard Close
Horsham RH12 5 AJ
01403 267030
http://www.intranetfocus.com
Dear Gerry
Like you I am an Associate Professor, or more correctly a Visiting
Professor, at the Department of Information Studies, University of
Sheffield. Today I was at a professional meeting and the subject of your
email barrage on list-serves came up. It transpired that many of us now just
send your emails direct to our spam filters. It's not that we are not
interested in the subjects you raise - indeed some of your comments are of
considerable value. However we all feel that at least one email a day from
you is just too much like spam.
Like you I have opinions on what is happening in my particular space, and I
blog on my web site. Some people around the world sign up to an RSS feed and
are alerted to what I am saying - but the overwhelming majority could not
care less. The way that you use mailing lists means that I cannot even
unsubscribe to your stream of emails without cutting myself off from a
mailing list I find of considerable professional value. By all means set up
some RSS feeds, and then I could subscribe and see a one line header that I
could open up if I so desire.
But I would be most interested to learn why you, as a distinguished and
experienced information professional, justify sending out information to
people who may not be interested in it without any means of them stopping
the stream of emails arriving in their email boxes. How would your users
feel at ISU if you just walked in to their office every day with all the
chemistry journals that had arrived that day, providing them with no means
of selecting which ones they wanted? Equally how would you feel if you
walked past their office door an hour later to find that the journals were
all in the trash can unread?
Your output contains much that is of interest and value to the profession
but the impact would be so much greater if you did not scream at us through
email but whisper in our ear when we need inspiration
-----Original Message-----
From: UKEIG: the UK eInformation Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of A C L Hall
Sent: 12 May 2009 11:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Gerard McKiernan - too much
My eMail seems to contain about half a dozen emails from him via you
each day. Is there anyway short of filtering them to junk that you
could cut down on his prolixity? Or shall I contact him direct; I
don't want to hurt his feelings but ....
Austin Hall
47 Burbage Road, London SE24 9HB
020807333297
[log in to unmask]
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