This is the mailing list (listserv) of INFOLINK, the Eastern New Jersey Regional Library Cooperative and its members. Librarians in the INFOLINK service area can get a regional perspective on library issues through INFOLINK's listserv, INFOLINK-L. In response to member requests for more opportunities to exchange expertise on technology and other topics, INFOLINK has created an open forum for communication and discussion among member libraries.

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Subscribe to infolink-l by filling out the following form. You will be sent email requesting confirmation, to prevent others from gratuitously subscribing you. This is a private list, which means that the members list is not available to non-members. If  for any reason you have difficulty subscribing or if you would just like to ask a question of the list manager, please send email to Mi-Sun Lyu at lyu@infolink.org

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How To Post Messages on the Listserv

Now that you are subscribed to the list, all you need to do is ask your question or participate in the current discussion and wait for someone to answer.

To post a new message to the list you send mail to the list address using the same procedure as when you send mail to other people. Your mail program does not need to know that you are sending to a list. The list address is the name of the list, followed by the name of the machine where it is hosted, in our case infolink-l@lists.infolink.org (this is not case sensitive.) Ergo, To post a message to all the list members, send email to infolink-l@lists.infolink.org.

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Archive

To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the infolink-l Archives.

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Replying to messages from the list

Once you become familiar with LISTSERV and mailing lists, you will probably want to respond to a posting you have read. Don't be shy! People will not get upset at you for contributing. The best way to respond is by using the "reply" function of your mail program. If you use reply you will reply only to the sender of the original message, if you use reply-all you will reply to the sender AND the entire list.

You can of course post a new message, but you will then have to retype the subject, and if you enter something slightly different people may not realize it is a reply to a previous post. There is no universally correct place to send your reply. Most of the time, your reply will be useful to at least one other person on the list, but on the other hand that might be only a small fraction of the list membership, and some people might complain that you are wasting their time (some people say that anyway, so don't worry unless several people seem to share this opinion).

In general, if your reply is short there is little harm in sending it to everyone: it does not take much time to discard a message which is not interesting. On the other hand, if your reply is a 2000-line paper you wrote on the subject it might not be a good idea to send it to the list unless you are sure everyone is interested. Some people have to pay for mail by the character, or to download it to a personal computer through a low-speed modem. The best thing to do in that case is to send a short message to the list saying you wrote this paper, and that people who are interested can contact you for a copy.

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Listserv Netiquette

Now that our listserv has become active and has multiple postings daily, we are delighted to be able to offer you the option of subscribing to the listserv in a digest form.

If you choose this option, you will receive a message in your email once a day. When you click on the message, you will see the subjects of all the messages collected from the previous day and you may choose which ones to read or skip. You may, of course, continue to receive listserv messages as they are posted by not exercising this option. We hope that this choice enhances the usefulness of this service.

INFOLINK-L is the listserv of the INFOLINK Regional Library Cooperative and is provided free of charge for the benefit of INFOLINK members. As such, all postings should be of a professional nature providing information about the INFOLINK organization, its services, its members or the practice of librarianship. Position announcements may be posted if they fulfill these requirements.

Discussions will not be monitored, and users are asked to follow appropriate "netiquette" and to use the list on the "honor system." All topics of interest to libraries are considered acceptable - technological, information access, advocacy, etc. At present, there will be a single list for all topics. In order to facilitate the use of the listserv, the use of a descriptive word or term in the subject line, i.e., "ILL" or "cataloging problem", will be necessary.

1. Above all, please respect people's time and bandwidth. Address messages of limited interest directly to the individuals involved. Messages promoting a commercial service or product should be forwarded to lyu@infolink.org for screening. Only those commercial messages considered to be (1) of sufficient general interest or (2) new and interesting information for a large segment of the membership will be forwarded to the listserv.
2. Please identify yourself with a first and last name & your e-mail address on all messages. U.S. mail addresses and phone numbers are optional, but should be included when appropriate.
3. Messages or replies intended for one person should be addressed to that individual, not to the entire list. When replying to a message consider the addressee. The listserv is set so that clicking on your "reply" button will send a posting to all the subscribers.
4. Also when replying to a message, please cut and include only whatever part of the original message necessary for your reply to be understood. If this is not possible, offer to send the file to interested individuals only. Add new information at the beginning of the message rather than at the end. When necessary, change the subject to accurately reflect the content.
5. Please do not send attachments to the entire list. Include the items in the body of your message if possible. If the items are too long, offer to send the attachments to individuals upon request. (Some systems are slowed down by attachments.)
6. If you go on vacation and set your email to send back an "out-of-office" autoreply, please sign off from the listserv first. You may sign back on to the list when you return. If you feel that you receive too many listserv messages, consider subscribing to the DIGEST service. See above for instructions. In digest form, you will receive no more than 1 message per day. You can still open and read each messages.

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