Well said Elizabeth,
That's why I find list serves more valuable than Linked In etc because I don't have to actively go into them - all the good stuff just lands in my inbox. And if it's irrelevant it takes precisely 00000.1 of a second to delete it. If I never know about it, I can't make a judgement on its relevance....
I remember very well the days before email and therefore list serves. I was a lone archivist working in a basement without a clue about what was happening in the wider IRM world. I was also broke and couldn't afford membership of societies so never saw any bulletins or newsletters.
Clare
Clare Cowling
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Transport for London
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-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Elizabeth Barber
Sent: 12 May 2011 09:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Thoughts on the Use of List Serves
Following the discussions on the list serve over the last few days has made me stop to think about the value of the list serve and the information, expertise and experience which the records management community is so prepared to share with one another. I offer these thoughts for people to ponder on.
It reminded me of that now famous saying of Donald Rumsfeld's, about the fact that there are some things we know we don't know and there are other things we don't know, we don't know. This for me sums up the value of the list serve, for those still finding their feet in a new organisation, a new role, or with new responsibilities are usually well aware of the things they don't know, the list serve is a really safe place to ask the questions to turn those "known unknowns" into knowledge. The capacity of the records management community to find answers to almost everything never ceases to astound me and the willingness to share expertise puts other professional communities to shame.
But to my mind, the most important role of the list serve is to alert us all to the things that we didn't know, we didn't know. There have been many occasions where questions raised on the list serve or information supplied has made me stop and think about issues that hadn't yet crossed my path. It allows me to stay ahead of the game and therefore improves the performance of my organisation.
But therein lies the dilemma, how do I know what I don't know if no one tells me. The random nature of what appears on the list serve is a strength. For me, the price of spending a short amount of time sorting out my email rules and getting the list serve messages to file in appropriate folders for me to deal with at my leisure is a small price to pay for the enormous benefit I get from the information which zips around. I do sometimes stop to wonder how we got all our information before the list serves were set up.
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