Some years ago, when the problem wasn't as bad as it is now, I suggested
via the ARLIS-L that, A) members keep the listserve to topics relevant to
our business (which more or less has happened), and B) that each of us
*try* to follow subject naming guidelines, i.e., that the gist of the
message could be gleaned in that field. The usual emotional reactions
about freedom, and about the amount of time it takes to delete messages
trickled in--a number of which from people no did not belong to ARLIS(!).
Janine, Maja and others are quite right: for those of us who have to get a
lot of work accomplished each day and who receive masses of email, it's
essential to know the basic content of a message. The amount of time it
takes to figure out which 40 messages a day (in my case) are not relevant
and delete them *is* a lot. I suspect more members are going to have this
problem in the future.
Anything that could be done to make the listserve more efficient to our
membership would be appreciated.
Lee Sorensen
Duke University
South Regional Representative ARLIS/NA and
acting Web Administrator
>If everyone used a standard subject heading, as Janine suggests, it would
>be quite easy to hit the delete key. As it is now, many people use only a
>serial title or some other unhelpful heading, so we end up having to pull
>up those messages only to find that they are of no interest to us. When
>all of the ARLIS messages are mixed in with all of our other messages, it
>does get tedious wading through them.
>
>Maja Keech, Reference Specialist
>Prints and Photographs Division
>Library of Congress
>
>On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Williams - Douglas
>M. wrote:
>
>> Really folks, how hard is it to hit the delete key?
>>
|