DejaNews Question

[Robert J Tiess]

Dana Pearson <dpearson at eastland.net> writes:
>Some months back DejaNews began a new service, newsgroup browsing.
>Since our college does not provide news service, I thought this new
>service would be a valuable resource in addition to the search service.
>However, I have encountered puzzling results as I browse and search 
>(I'm producing an orientation video for our students).
>
>First of all, there seems to be far fewer newsgroups available fo
>browsing than the news service offered by my local ISP.  Web4Lib is 
>not included.

Hello, Dana.  DejaNews allows you to search newsgroups.  However
Web4Lib is not a newsgroup.  It's a listserv, AKA a mailing list,
something
like newsgroups but not the same (the main differences being in the
way information is stored and disseminated from posters to receivers)
Many listservs are archived and searchable, but the problem is, not all
listservs are stored on the same server.  Sometimes a server services
several lists.  It's my understanding DejaNews does not do mailing lists
yet.  Given the sheer volume of daily postings and the huge variety of
information sources involved, I can understand, from the implementor's
perspective, if such a comprehensive search service were not available
yet.  I'll look into that.  There are places such as http://www.liszt.com
that allow to look _for_ mailing lists, but not to search their
respective
contents.

I should also say you can (usually) interact with a listserver, perhaps
even search its archive for your postings.  If you kept the subscription
information that came as the first message when you subscribed to a
list, quite possibly some information's in there, or instructions to
request
additional information are there.  If you're not really sure, or if you
since
deleted that file, contact the listowner(s) of the respective list you
wish
to research, and they will guide you.

More and more these days, listserv archives are being made available
via the World Wide Web.  This seems to be the case with this list,
Web4Lib.  Here's a quote from the Web4Lib subscription file you received
when you joined this list:

>ARCHIVE
>The Web4Lib Archive is available for browsing and searching at 
>http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive.html

I haven't used this service, but, if this information is still current,
you
should be able to review any posts regarding this list.  Each list is
generally archived and searchable on a list-by-list basis.

I hope some of this helped.  Take care.

					Robert
					rjtiess at juno.com

Robert J. Tiess
Lib. Tech., Webmaster
Middletown Thrall Library - http://www.thrall.org
Literacy Volunteers of America - http://www.thrall.org/lva