new list

[Karen G. Schneider]

Another approach to list-mania is to set your inbound traffic to no-mail
and then read Web4Lib through the archive.  

I'd say that Web4Lib stays pretty much on topic for an unmoderated list.
And as for definitions of words in "any dictionary"... Peter, I have one
friend who is still researching "T1."  ;-)   (No, Tom, she didn't accept
that "digital first" definition, even if it WAS in a book.)  The quality of
answers to even simple questions can be very useful.  Even "metadata" rated
a thoughtful reply from no less than Mr. Metadata himself, Erik Jul.  What
is an easy or obvious question that can be answered by any old book, and
what is difficult and needs public (as it were) assistance, will range from
person to person, library to library, circumstance to circumstance.
Learning to sift and sort information is part of the game.  When the list
becomes highly irrelevant, we all feel it.  It would be good if we more
often chose to write people privately, but then again... we need some
public postings, or there wouldn't be a useful archive to refer to. 

We could, if we wanted, develop a set of topics and try to stick to them.
"DEFINITION NEEDED" would be one, imho.  Frankly, exploring the meaning of
T1 got me on a roll that helped me understand bandwidth issues much better
than I did before.  If that's how you learn... that's how you learn.

Speaking of learning, if you have any real-life anecdotes about using 700+
Great Sites and can get them to me before midnight EST today, Tuesday, for
a very short piece I'm doing for a computer magazine, I'm  all ears.  See
http://www.ala.org/parentspage/greatsites/ 
_____________________________________________________
Karen G. Schneider |  kgs at bluehighways.com
Councilor-at-Large, American Library Association
Internet Filter Assessment Project: http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/
Author: A Practical Guide to Internet Filters *** Now Available! ***
Neal Schuman, 1997 ISBN 1-55570-322-4 http://www.neal-schuman.com
Information is hard work
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