Net Notes: E-mail lists

If you want to discuss librarianship issues there are plenty of discussion lists you can join. For Australia alone there would probably be over 100 lists as ALIA and the National Library support nearly 70 lists and there are a number of lists independent of those institutions. By checking the websites of ALIA and the National Library and following their links to other lists, you will be able to track down virtually any Australian library discussion list. The main URLs and some of the list commands are given below.

ALIA e-lists
ALIA currently has 53 e-lists listed at group listing page.

The address for subscribing, unsubscribing, and other requests is mailman@alia.org.au. Please note that commands are not case sensitive and that all commands to listproc should be sent in the body of the message, not as the subject. For 'aliaXYZ', substitute the name of the list, e.g. aliaNATSPEC.

To subscribe, send the following message (without a subject or signature): subscribe aliaXYZ Jane Doe

To unsubscribe, send the following message: unsubscribe aliaXYZ

To unsubscribe from your old e-mail address, send the following message:
unsubscribe aliaXYZ for jane.doe@whatever.com.au

To unsubscribe from every ALIA list you are on, send this message: PURGE

General tips on managing your ALIA lists
To find out which lists you are on send the following message: WHICH
You will receive a list of the e-lists you have joined (this also happens after using the PURGE command but that is a list of the lists you used to be on).

To receive the digest (one daily e-mail with all messages sent to that list) send the message:
SET aliaXYZ mail digest

To stop receiving messages while you are away (and avoid everyone on that list seeing your "Jane Doe is out of the office" message ad nauseum as you enjoy your long service leave), send this message:
SET aliaXYZ mail postpone
NB: you can still send mail to the list while it is set on postpone.

To cancel the postpone or digest command, use
SET aliaXYZ mail ack

NB: use 'noack' if you do not want to receive a copy of the messages you send to the list.

Sending messages
Send messages to the list at aliaXYZ@alia.org.au (or to aliaXYZ@alianet.alia.org.au).

Accessing the archives
If the list has an archive, e-mail aliaXYZ@alia.org.au with this message: index
The reply will list the files available and to get one of these files you will need to send a message in the format: get [archive] [name of file] eg. get listproc/database/name/oldstuff FAQlist

National Library of Australia e-lists
The National Library of Australia hosts 16 e-lists, including COPY-LIB, ILRS-L (Interlibrary Resource Sharing Directory), and Kinetica-L. They are listed, together with basic commands at http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/listserv/. ListProc is also used by the National Library so the commands used for ALIA e-lists will also work for these lists. Commands need to be sent to listproc@nla.gov.au and messages need to be sent to [listname]@nla.gov.au e.g. kinetica-l@nla.gov.au.

Accessing the archives
Some of the lists have web based archives and you can follow the link from http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/listserv/. To access the other list archives you will need to use ListProc commands. Insert the name of the list where '[mailing list]' is used, and the real filename for "[filename]".

To find out what is available send the message: index [mailing list]

To get one of the files, send the message: get [mailing list] [filename]

Other e-mail lists
Several directories of e-lists are mentioned on the National Library's "Search the Internet" pathway at http://www.nla.gov.au/pathways/pthw_global.html#disc

For library e-lists check:

Australian library related discussion lists
http://www.nla.gov.au/libraries/resource/lists.html

ALIAnet's "Other electronic mailing lists in the sectorhttp://www.alia.org.au/alia.org.au/alianet/e-lists/othttp://www.alia.org.au/p://alia.org.au/alianet/e-lists/other.lists.html

This covers many non-ALIA lists including WAIN. Subscribing to WAIN is mandatory if you want to find out what events are coming up in WA.

Ozlists
http://www.gu.edu.au/ozlists/
Ozlists is a directory of Australian e-lists, arranged by subject. Some of the information for the "Library and Information Services" section seems very dated. For example, the ALIA lists include "alia98" and the listowner details for at least 4 lists are out of date.

Camille Peters

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