Dear Gary and other members of the NATIVE-L community,
You haven't lived until you have experienced LISTSERV! I know the system
is subject to bugs, but it works, all the same. It is all Gary says it
is, and more. I happen to know, because I am co-owner of a LISTSERV net
called GAELIC-L@IRLEARN.UCD.IE.BITNET, with over two hundred subscribers
worldwide. GAELIC-L has been serving Gaelic speakers for over two years
now. I joined NATIVE-L because I believe that members of minority cultures
within Europe (such as the Scots and the Irish) have a lot in common with
minority groups elsewhere, particularly with the pre-colonial peoples of
Northern America, who - just like us - have been around for thousands of
years, but are finding it very difficult to preserve our heritage against the
onslaught of monoglot mass media. Here, e-mail services come into play,
whereby we can set up electronic archives (using LISTSERV) and communicate
with each other instantaneously, on a global basis (we have set our LISTSERV
to relay GAELIC-L msgs without going through a moderator - which is a
marvellous thing for me, because I spent a long time working as moderator
for G-L, and I know exactly how heavy the workload can become!)
A word of warning about LISTSERV - every now and then, to conserve space,
computer services will wish to purge old files (LOGFILES are the logs of
BBOARD transactions). Try to ensure that old LOGFILES are not purged. This
can be done by ensuring that the list owner (Gary S. Trujillo) is given the
power to place these and other non-BBOARD files (useful bibliographies
and Binhex materials, etc.) directly into storage on LISTSERV@TAMVM1.
All these things are worth bearing in mind by all subscribers who think
they may wish - in the future - to forward valuable archive material to
a LISTSERV storage sits.
Marion Gunn
[ Thanks very much, Marion, for your helpful recommendations of LISTSERV-
based mailing lists. I'll have to investigate the archiving features
you mention. --Gary ]