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I also have been offended by these xenophobic responses to a politely phrased, innocent and entirely relevant question. One surely has the right to ask for art information regardless of one's name, and regardless of any visa scams to which no link can be demonstrated, without being subjected to such very public insults. It is not inherently suspicious to have a yahoo email account, and any student is likely to write without his or her institutional affiliation stated. In any case, a slight breach of listserv etiquette should not be grounds for what is tantamount to slander. I support Raymond Smith's comments, and would like in addition to state that I plan to unsubscribe from this listserv following this posting. The atmosphere engendered by certain responses to Mr. Omar's question makes me uncomfortable. Amy Marshall (The views expressed here are my own. In this instance I do not believe that my institutional affiliation is relevant to my posting.) -----Original Message----- From: Ted Goodman [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 9:57 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ARLIS-L] Innocent question/Homeland protection Dear ARLIS-L subscribers, I apologize to Mr. Omar and to you if my reply seemed rude. I am not going to try to justify it- however, I am going to tell you about a recent incident which was in my mind during my response. Less than 3 weeks ago we had an incident while preparing for the St. Louis conference. It was handled very well by Clarke and the Conference leadership. Thus, you have not been previously informed. 8 Islamic Nigerians attempted to fraudulently register for the upcoming conference all of whom were using yahoo accounts (same as Mr. Omar) all of whom gave no address (same as Mr. Omar) and all of whom used the same credit card. They wanted us to fax the US Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria and arrange for US visas so they could leave the country. After consulting with the African bibliographer here at Columbia whether they were in fact librarians and determining that they were not, I contacted the US Embassy and informed them of the visa scam. Below is a copy of the email from the Embassy in response as well as my original email. I also alerted two societal affiliates who are having conference soon- AASL and ARLIS/UK & Eire. Many of us have received emails from "retired generals with millions of dollars". Since Mr. Omar used an anonymous yahoo email address and he did not inform us of his institutional affiliation in his first posting, I felt justified in issuing a caution. BTW- he is not listed in the web-based UMass Amherst directory. This is my last word on this- I am too busy to take up further time since the conference is in a week. Times have changed and we must be more vigilant- I'm sorry if my manner upsets some people. Ted Goodman, President ARLIS/NA [log in to unmask] ----------------------------- From: "Lacy, Melanie S" @state.gov> To: "'Ted Goodman'" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: RE: Nigerian Conference Delegates Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:55:56 -0500 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2654.89) Mr. Goodman, I sincerely thank you for your vigilance in this matter. Everyday we encounter applicants who try to secure visas under fraudulent pretenses. With regard to this particular case, I checked our database and it seems as though 3 of the applicants tried to obtain visas but were denied by one of our consular officers. Now that we have the names of the others, we will definitely be on alert should they too try to apply for visas. Again, thank you for notifying us, doing your part to help meet the challenging task of protecting our borders. -----Original Message----- From: Ted Goodman [ <mailto:[log in to unmask]> mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 9:31 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Fwd: Nigerian Conference Delegates Hi- I am the President of the Art Libraries Society of North America (web: www.arlisna. <http://www.arlisna.org/> org <http://www.arlisna.org/> < <http://www.arlisna.org/> http://www.arlisna.org/> ). I just want to alert you that the following 6 Nigerians [2 additional came later that day] have attempted to register for our annual conference to be held Mar. 20-26, 2002 in St. Louis, MO. I think it is a scam and I just wanted to alert you to the fact that they may be trying to get visas. SPENCER NOSA, USIOMOIFO IKPONWOSA, USIOMOIFO OLUSOLA, BANTALE ADEDAMOLA, MOHAMMED HASSAN, MICHAEL AKINTUNDE, OLANREWAJU HASSAN Do not issue any US visas to these persons- I do not believe they are legitimate librarians who would be registering for an art librarians conference! In fact, they could even be Islamic terrorists trying to fraudulently get into the US. Please let me know if you have had other encounters with them and if I should be aware of other dangers. Thank you, Ted Goodman, President Art Libraries Society of North America Columbia University 1172 Amsterdam Ave., MC0301 New York, NY 10027 tel: 212-854-8407 fax: 212-854-8904 email: [log in to unmask] At 09:31 AM 03/12/2002 -0500, Raymond Smith wrote: I also found the response to Mr. Omar's query uncalled for and was quite taken aback by the two quite rude replies. It was an innocent request and quite similar to others posted by either the membership or library students. Not too long ago I learned in response to my question as to the exclusivity of the Arlis List Serve that it was open to anyone who found our web site of interest. Since it is indeed open to the public, need we get paranoid with regard to such queries from outside the membership? I think Mr. Omar deserves an apology, as his question was an interesting one and in no way threatening nor demanding. Perhaps some of our membership may also consider providing an answer to his question regarding important art centers in the U.S. Raymond Smith R.W. Smith Bookseller New Haven, Connecticut __________________________________________________________________ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] Administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html <http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html> Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]