Pamela Wilson
BLOG
LS 589
BLOG
LS 589
LISTSERVE
When you assigned us to join a LISTSERV, I had no idea what I was joining. I heard the word before but didn’t know to what it referred. Although I was able to find and explore a technological educational LISTSERV, I was surprised when I started getting emails from the LISTSERV to which I subscribed and from members of the LISTSERV. Because of this, I decided to explore LISTSERV for my first BLOG entry.
According to the information found on L-soft’s website, LISTSERV has been around for 23 years. It is an email list management system. According to redirected information from LISTSERV found on Wikipedia, Eric Thomas conceived of the idea for an automatic mailing system in 1986 when he was a student in Paris. The L-Soft page has autobiographical information on Eric Thomas which states that he helped to lead the way in Internet Technology. He became interested in the Internet in 1985 and became one of the developers of the Internet. When Thomas developed LISTSERV, email connection between the United States and Europe was extremely slow. There were only two links between the continents which had 9.6 kbps capacity each. After school, Eric moved to Switzerland, the place where the World Wide Web was created. He then moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he created SUNET, a computer network which put Sweden at the forefront of European information technology.
LISTSERV was offered for free from 1986 through 1993. After that it became commercial software held by the company L-Soft which was founded by Eric Thomas in 1994. One can explore the products by visiting L-Soft’s website which is found at http://www.lsoft.com. L-Soft sells an email list management system, email marketing software, and email list hosting. A free version is still offered for non-commercial use. The company’s home page contains brief demos of the software for interested customers. L-Soft’s homepage also has a place for interested people to subscribe to the latest news and announcements from L-Soft.
According to the information on Wikipedia, in 1995 LISTSERV introduced the first spam filter. LISTSERV also offers security for its users because every message and message attachment is scanned for viruses. If a virus is found, the message will not be accepted. This protection is not offered by any other electronic mailing list software. This is an indication of the forward thinking management of the company.
Although my experience with using a technological LISTSERV is limited, I am already impressed with how it expedites communication between professionals who would otherwise have no contact with each other. On my H-Net LISTSERV (which is more for higher education), one member is requesting chapters for a book to be published on distance education. Another subscriber is requesting participants to review Maryland Quality Matters courses if anyone is trained to do so. Some new subscribers simply introduce themselves and tell what their educational background and expertise is for future reference. One new subscriber asked how to use the LISTESRV and one of the site managers responded in detail. This helped me to understand more about the workings of the site as well as the questioner. Others ask questions regarding technology problems. Some ask others how to best use the technology that they have. All of these questions are politely answered by a subscriber who has information on that particular subject. I have only been a subscriber for four days, yet I am beginning to see the value of this LISTSERV especially for technicians and faculty in higher educational settings. Sometimes my inbox gets quite full, though and it takes time to read and sort through all of the emails.
ED Tech, the high school LISTSERV to which I subscribed, is managed by the state of Texas. At this point the site isn’t quite as busy as H-Net. There are questions and suggestions which come, but not nearly so many. I am interested to see how the future develops. I am learning from this experience that if a person gets involved with the right LISTSERV, it can serve to be a very valuable resource.
References
http://www.lsoft.com (Retrieved September 5, 2009).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listserv (Retrieved August 28, 2009).
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