Dear Colleagues,

I apologise for the 'start up' problems that have been caused over the last few weeks by the transferring of the EATAW listserv from the University of Copenhagen server to the JISC host server. In moving the EATAW-conf and EATAW-discuss listservs over to the JISC server, the EATAW Board had thought it would make most sense to transfer all subscribers to the list onto the new listserv, rather than to ask members to re-subscribe to the new list individually. While this has been the most efficient and trouble-free way to migrate everyone to the new server, it has meant that people who may have set up their individual settings on the old listservs to deliver EATAW postings in specific ways (e.g. as digests or compilations or even spam) have suddenly found that their delivery settings have been reset to 'regular' on the new EATAW listserv, which means that every post that is sent on the listserv is immediately delivered to them. 'Regular' delivery is currently every subscriber's default setting.

There are a number of ways for subscribers to manage the way in which they receive postings from the EATAW listserv, as John Harbord and others have suggested. The JISC server also offers the following options:

JISC Help for Subscription Type

Regular
With a "regular" subscription, you receive individual postings immediately as they are processed by LISTSERV.

Digest (Traditional), Digest (MIME format), Digest (HTML format)
With a "digest" subscription, you receive larger messages (called "digests") at regular intervals, usually once per day or once per week. These "digests" are collections of individual list postings. Some lists are so active that they produce several digests per day.

Digests are a good compromise between reading everything as it is posted and feeling like the list is clogging your mailbox with a multitude of individual postings.

There are three digest formats: a "traditional", text-only format; a MIME format, which (with mail clients that understand MIME digests) "bursts" the individual messages out of the digest so that you can read them separately; and an HTML format, which requires an HTML mail clients.

Index (Traditional), Index (HTML format)
With an "index" subscription, you receive short "index" messages at regular intervals, usually once per day or once per week. These "indexes" show you what is being discussed on the list, without including the text of the individual postings. For each posting, the date, the author's name and address, the subject of the message, and the number of lines is listed. You can then download messages of interest from the server (the index contains instructions on how to do that).

An index subscription is ideal if you have a slow connection and only read a few hand-picked messages. The indexes are very short and you do not have to worry about long download times. The drawback of course is that you need to reconnect to retrieve messages of interest from the server.

You can choose to have the index sent to you in either a traditional format (plain text) or in HTML format with hyperlinks

If you wish to change your settings to receive postings from the EATAW listserv in one of the ways described above, please go to https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=EATAW. You should then be able to log in to the JISC server (you will need to type in your email address that is linked to the EATAW listserv and to create a password for yourself). Once you have logged in, you are in control and you can change your settings by clicking on the 'Subscriber's Corner' link (this is at the top left-hand side of the webpage). This will bring up a webpage that lists all JISC listservs to which you are subscribed, and the name 'EATAW listserv' should appear. If you click on the word 'settings' next to 'EATAW listserv', you will, if you wish, be able to change your subscription type (e.g. to 'digest' instead of 'regular'). You will also have the option (under 'Miscellaneous') to disable your email address temporarily, so that if you will be away for an extended period of time, you will not receive emails from the EATAW listserv until you enable them on your return. On this page you can also unsubscribe yourself from the list (and add yourself again at a later date if you wish).  If you have any problems in navigating the JISC site, you are welcome to contact me directly.

The EATAW Board will consider the desirability and feasibility of the suggestion about 'discussion forums' made by Martin and Alex with reference to the AALL listserv and how it operates its discussions, and I will report back to you on this as soon as possible. In the meantime, colleagues who are interested in announcements but do not want to receive other emails may wish to check the EATAW website (the archive and the conference announcements) regularly instead of being subscribed to the list, and to re-join discussions by rejoining the list as indicated above. This seems to be a bit of an extreme measure, given the options JISC provides for managing one's listserv settings, but it may work best for some.

In closing, I have to say that I and many other colleagues have been really pleased with the recent flurry of postings on the new EATAW listserv that testify to our cross-cultural interest in discussing practices, pedagogies and theories of Academic Writing. As one colleague has written: 'I think the EATAW listserv should welcome discussion on any aspect of academic writing. After all, that's what EATAW is about!' I think it is great that in addition to the biennial EATAW conferences, the new EATAW listserv is fulfilling EATAW's mission of 'bringing together those involved or interested in the teaching, tutoring, research, administration and development of academic writing in higher education in Europe'.

Best wishes,

Lisa

Chair: EATAW Board

 
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Dr. Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams
Head of the Centre for Academic Writing
Coventry University
Priory Street
Coventry, England  CV1 5FB

phone +44 (0)2476 887904
 
 
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