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Re: [ARSCLIST] ruminations on the ARSClist-was: message board vs. listserv
Brandon Burke wrote:
I guess the question is, how much are we tailoring this thing to our own
needs and conveniences vs. perhaps making the list's contents easier to
navigate for the greater archival/collector/discographer/etc community?
No, this is not a rhetorical question. I'm asking because an answer in
either direction will, in turn, answer almost all of my questions above.
Seems we're providing a bountiful wealth of knowledge to the
public...provided they're wiling to cross a swamp to get it. (Again,
this goes back to the question about whom our target audiences are for
these posts.)
Please note that there is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy here. One
who finds the listserve uncomfortable is unlikely to use it for frequent
posts; one who is accustomed to the e-mail interface will find posting
easy as well.
I am not clear on the extent to which this list is focussed on serving
the broader public and the extent to which it is to serve the
archivist/librarian community. I sit somewhere between the two
communities, focussing on practical home needs far more than most who
post here, yet being regarded as an extremist among collectors for
insisting on calibration and the like. I do not believe there is a
single community such as you depict or that there is an effective way to
serve the ones that exist in a single forum.
Let me use one element as an example: documenting the recording. It
would be grand to have a definition of the information to be catalogued
and the format to be used so that collections from all archives could be
correlated and access could be sought from knowledge, not from personal
queries or assumptions about completeness. Such a definition has no
relationship at all to the catalogue questions with which I deal,
typically: What's the best alternative to CDDB?
This list functions in a way similar to the discussions incident to a
professional meeting. It is the place where ideas are thrown out, where
processes are explored, where incidental information is exchanged. The
meeting itself and its documentation as part of the society's journal
are the formal components. A message board could serve a different
function, for example in developing a standard with the give and take
that that process entails. It is more precisely focussed than the list -
which is an advantage for some purposes.
In short (and at long last): if the purpose of this forum is to
consolidate ideas, then the message board is an attractive method. If it
is to open lines of thought, then it should remain a mailing list.
Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/