The archive slogans don't do anything for me - this seems to keep coming up every five years or so, and the slogans never get any wittier or less embarrassing - but how list members have responded to the topic DOES interest me.

It's great for once to see lots of sequential postings to the list, all bouncing off each other.  That's what I understand to be the purpose of a discussion list.  My heart sinks whenever I see postings saying "please reply to me off-list and I'll summarise for the list."  That should be reserved only for where sensitive or confidential information needs to be conveyed to one list member only, because what this means in practice is that the archives of this list are largely composed of questions with very few associated answers.

The value of an email discussion list is surely that it generates information interchange where the discussion is sparked, and then feeds, off the interplay of responses?

In reality, not all that many discussions do get "summarised for the list". Hats off to those who do, but apart from the fact that this is a waste of time (if the discussion went to the list in the first place we would all have the information from which to do a summary that met our own needs), then a summary is only one person's version of the interchange of information - I want to see the original sources and make up my own mind!  

Compared to other email lists I'm on, this list is hardly high-traffic.  I think we could stand a bit more on-list discussion, and a bit more expression of opinion.

And before I get snowed under with all the messages telling me that "my in-box is jammed full of emails as it is and I don't want any more" - well, aren't we meant to be information management professionals?  Having all your incoming emails sitting in your general Inbox is the equivalent of keeping all your documents in the default "documents" folder on your C:\ drive.

At the very least spend a few minutes learning to use the "rules" and "filters" tools in your email software.  All my incoming listserv emails (as well as all incoming emails from certain people and institutions!) are automatically diverted from my Inbox to seperate folders for me to consult at my leisure - which also means that I can just delete whole discussion threads unread if they don't interest me.  (Apologies to non-Microsoft users - your vocabulary may vary.)

Gosh, that turned into a bit of a missive didn't it?

Cheers all

Richard

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Richard Taylor BA MArAd
Archives & Local History Development Manager
Learning, Culture and Children's Services
City of York Council
G/15 Mill House
North Street
YORK YO1 6JD

Tel:    01904 554309
Mobile: 07879 117218
Email: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
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