Annual
Report
(2003)
Submitted by:
Kerri Scannell, ARLIS-L Moderator
scannel@uky.edu
859-257-4630
859-257-4662 (fax)
Submitted on:
February 9, 2004
Membership
ARLIS-L serves as the primary
means of communication for members of the Society as well as others interested
in art librarianship and other art related topics (including students,
librarians from other disciplines, and art librarians from other countries.)
There are currently 1,529 subscribers from 30 countries.
The largest membership comes from the United States with 1,302
subscribers, followed by Canada with 97 subscribers, Australia (25), Great
Britain (21), the Netherlands (17), New Zealand (13), Belgium (6), France and
Israel (5 each), and various other countries, including Germany, Greece,
Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Peru, Cuba, Qatar, Spain, Taiwan, and the United
Arab Emirates.
Updates in 2003
Since 2001, ARLIS-L has
undergone only minor changes. This
past year circumstances forced the settings of the list to be reviewed for
improvements once again. A week of
statistics showed that the list moderator was deleting anywhere from 50 to 100
messages of SPAM daily. In making
changes, the moderator tried very carefully to keep as many of the previous
listserv settings as possible.
The primary change to the list
was to limit list postings to subscribers only.
This has completely eliminated the SPAM the moderator was had been
receiving. As a result of this
change, subscribers to the list must have their subscribed email address exactly
as it appears in their outgoing messages. The
listserv software does not perform “fuzzy matches” for similar addresses.
This did cause some temporary problems with individuals shortly after the
change, but most problems seem to have been resolved.
Currently, all new subscribers
must be approved by the listserv moderator.
Upon approval, subscribers are added to the list and are set on
“review” status. Postings to
the list made by a subscriber on “review” status are sent to the moderator
first for approval. The moderator
is the only person who can remove the “review” status from a subscriber.
Subscribers not set on “review” can post directly to the list,
completely by-passing the moderator. However,
the moderator also has the ability to set an individual on “review” if
necessary, a precaution that was taken this year in response to a virus problem
at one institution.
Updates were also made to the ARLIS-L section of the ARLIS/NA web site (http://www.arlisna.org//arlisl.html) to offer more directions for individuals needing to change an email address or signoff the list.