Re: Focus of NativeNet
Elizabeth B. Pollard (uahebp01@asnuah.asn.net)
Wed, 27 Nov 1991 16:34:00 CDT
There is something to be said for segmenting the list by region, or
by interest group, for that matter, if only to make the volume of mail more
manageable. However, there appears to be significant technical difficulty in
doing that, unless separate mail lists are set up. Then each of us must make
decisions as to which lists to continue and what material we don't want to see
regularly.
While there are times that I feel I have seen more on a given topic
than I ever wanted to know, on the whole, at least 95% of the information on
NativeNet is of real interest. The trick seems to be in scanning the list of
messages received and picking out those which take first priority. If there
were some way to tell in advance how long a message is, perhaps that would
help. Longer ones could be saved and read as time allows. Perhaps a line or
word count on the subject line would be useful for this purpose. I'm not sure
what difficulty this presents -- it's just an idea. The subject headers and
NativeNet sections help to some extent in sorting out content, but there is
never a way to tell how long it will take to read something.
I personally would hate to miss a large proportion of what I receive
on this list. While not all of it is of immediately crucial interest, there
is frequently a comparative value already mentioned by some of you. It does
help put things in context to know that your group is not the only one facing
a specific problem, and perhaps one can occasionally pick up ideas on handling
a problem from learning how others have done so. While my primary interest is
in North American indigenous peoples, I also find news items from other areas
of great interest as well. And in as much as the environment impinges on the
well being of indigenous societies, that news is of interest, too.
Maybe the biggest problem most of us have is the same one we have with
the print media: there is simply too much information out there to keep up
with it all! Perhaps collections of documents could be submitted to Gary for
maintenance in the archives, and shorter summaries of the information in them
could be posted as messages, along with the information on how to obtain the
document files for those who wish to do so.
I've probably said enough for now, in any case. Sorry this message is
so long, but I consider this list and its focus very important. So there is
my two cents' worth.
Elizabeth Pollard, Univ. of Ala. in Huntsville
Bitnet: uahebp01@uahvax1 Internet: uahebp01@asnuah.asn.net