I'm new to HaSafran but I've been a member of many mailing lists going back more than 20 years and thought I could share some useful thoughts on this matter.
First, each group is different and therefore the style and scope of its communication is correspondingly shaped to meet the needs of that community. These discussions emerge in all lists eventually and sometimes repeatedly, especially as new members join and the list grows and changes. From observing the nature of the messages passed through HaSafran in the months since I joined, I've come to understand that this mailing list serves to support a sense of community among the members. In other words, it's more about providing a collective identity, with a large share of a social component, that it is about a strictly professional relationship. This makes a lot of sense, considering we're a widely dispersed and often isolated collection of individuals. We can talk to each other in a way we can't always talk to our geographic neighbors. If you are in a general library, can you say "Tanakh" to the librarian in the next office without explaining? If you are the sole librarian in your institution, can you discuss "Cutter numbers" and "deaccessioning" with your neighbors? And, as in so many similar cases, that sense of shared understanding and values evolves into a sense of community that spills over into other areas of our lives. Another way to look at it is that this virtual community fills an important niche or void in our lives, professional and otherwise. I think it would be good to accept this as the nature of this group and move on. Second, some of the issues raised have less to do with this wider scope and more to do with the mechanics of communicating. A lot of frustration could be avoided if subject headings were more articulate and other important information was more prominent (or simply included) in many of the messages. I've often marveled at folks posting items with subjects headings like "need advice" or "a question" or announcing at event at "Temple Beth El" or "the Jewish Community Center" (really? is there only one in the whole world?). Many problems with email communication could be avoided if folks spent a couple of seconds before hitting the Send button to think about their audience. Ask yourself, Is this going to make sense to someone that doesn't work or live in the same area? Is the topic of this note clear? Is there other information -- a complete citation, URL, address -- that will make this more useful to the recipients? (There were two recent postings about new additions to the AJL site that did not include the URL! Sure I can look it up, but why should I have to?) Along these lines, I'd like to recommend that event announcements include some location and date info in the subject header. I want to know about events even if I can't attend -- that's part of being professionally aware, in my view -- but I also want to know right off the top whether or not I can go or share with local colleagues. Including "SF - 5/20" in the subject doesn't seem to me to be an onerous requirement and I think this is a reasonable guideline. Similarly, if you are posting any item, use the subject field to provide a clear indication of what the message is about. The recent posting headed "Chumash for 4-6 graders" is an example of a good application of this idea. Finally, and this seems to be such a no-brainer for a library list, provide clear and complete bibliographic information and links for any of the items you cite. As someone who joined HaSafran to be able to be part of this community, I ask that we don't try to fix the scope or the style of the discussions that take place here -- it isn't broken from that perspective -- but that, at the same time that we try to make what we share as clear and as useful to others as possible. Thanks for your indulgence, -- Lee Jaffe, UC Santa Cruz Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
