[WEB4LIB] question and answer archives

[Araby Greene]

We aren't archiving reference questions, but will be archiving e-mail
comments and the Dean's responses in about two weeks (the app is finished,
other reasons for the delay). We have NT/IIS5, so I used ASP.

Others probably have more elegant solutions, but our needs are simple. Works
like this:

The comment form calls a script that e-mails the comment and writes it to a
database. For the response to get into the database, it is composed in a
passworded web form (not the dean's e-mail program). The form retrieves
comments to edit, updates the db record with the response and e-mails it to
the commentor. To preserve privacy and make the archive useful, the comment
does not display until flagged to display, and no personal info is shown. To
cut down on users who want to send an inappropriately long comment, the form
textarea limits them to 3000 characters.

Trying to get everything to work together and in the right order was very
time consuming, so I'm hoping to write it up and share, but that may take a
while. Contact me privately if you want to compare notes, that is, if you
are doing something similar.

Araby
________________________
Araby Greene
araby at unr.edu
Web Development Librarian
Getchell Library/322
Univ. of Nevada, Reno
http://www.library.unr.edu/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Hames" <Family.Hames at btinternet.com>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 4:07 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] question and answer archives


> Does anyone know of any libraries, offering email reference service, which
> archive the questions and answers on the web, as some of the commercial
> services do?
> Many thanks
> Hilary Hames