[WEB4LIB] "Talking About Public Access: PACS-L's First Decade "

[Sloan, Bernie]

This past October marked the 10th anniversary of my first posting to PACS-L
(for the curious, the posting was dated Tuesday, October 3, 1989, at
8:59AM).

I'd been using e-mail for the five or so years preceding the start of
PACS-L, but that was an internal system that allowed communication among the
35 or so libraries that then belonged to the ILCSO consortium. PACS-L was
the first list I subscribed to. And even though I had prior experience
communicating with folks at other locations, PACS-L opened up a whole new
world to me, and really changed the way I did business.

PACS-L, and the other library-related lists that followed really helped make
the professional world a smaller place. My favorite "small world" discovery
was finding out that Web4Lib's illustrious founder (Roy T) knows my brother.

At any rate, the way I do business now is VERY different from the way I did
business ten years ago, and PACS-L (and the other lists that followed it)
are the reason why.

Bernie Sloan

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Crawford [mailto:Walt_Crawford at notes.rlg.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 6:13 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] "Talking About Public Access: PACS-L's First Decade"




[Posted to PACS-L in different form. Apologies for cross-posting, but...]

I thought that Web4Lib folk who used to be on PACS-L or who've never been on
that list but recognize the overlap in the two lists' topics might be
interested
in this...

I've written an informal tribute to the first decade of PACS-L, and it's
ready
to read just a month after the New & Improved PACS-L started up again. The
article name:
"Talking About Public Access: PACS-L's First Decade."

The article is far too long to post here or anywhere else (7,900 words; 51K
characters), so I've put it on my personal Web site, in the "Libraries,
Media &
the Future" subsite.

Please use the "front door" for that subsite:

http://home.att.net/~wcc.libmedx

The front door has a people counter--but no banner ads or graphics, so it
shouldn't slow you down.

The article is the first link on the Libmedx home page (until I add
something
newer to that subsite, which shouldn't happen for a few weeks at least). The
article is far too long for most of us to read online, but it should print
nicely. Except for a few headings, it uses the default text typeface and
size
that you've set for your browser (I'll suggest Times New Roman if you don't
already have a serif typeface set). Using my default typeface, it takes 15
print
pages.

(Quite a few PACS-L participants and moderators contributed to this article,
but
it's my work, including conclusions and statistical judgments. I do plan to
prepare an article for print publication on this topic, but that will be
2,000
words or less, so there's a *lot* of editing to do.)

-walt crawford-