RE: EndNote List Announcement (use the forum--or roll your

own!)
Sender: [email protected]
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: [email protected]


At 4/8/2008 05:57 PM -0400, you wrote:

This is sad news. I read the emails, I am unlikely to go to a forum,
connect and read, just too time consuming. Oh well.

Barb Anderson
Medical Librarian
The Cleveland Clinic Alumni Library
9500 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44195

Hi Barb,

I'm replying to your note as it was pretty typical of many comments in
postings to this list so far.
I'd like to offer a brief reply to all those who have been--shall I say
hesitant?--to the idea of a form, and who have stated that one doesn't
have time to log into such a forum.

First, and as background, I've been working with list servers and fora
since just about the day they first started in the personal computer
area (almost 25 years now!), and I have made my experiences with many
types of community communication setups (LANS, Chat software, Internet
Voice over IP) etc. 

Although I've only just gotten started with EndNote, I can see that a
forum would be better for me: I don't have time to weed through all the
messages that this list server generates. (No finger wagging here,
folks!)  Since I first enrolled in this forum (March 12), there have
been 104 postings. That makes 31 days--for an average of 3.2+ postings
per day. (Of course, some days, go "empty," and some have avalanches (11
postings for 17 March, 12 for 4 April). However, only two postings have
been of interest to me: the one on Zotero, and the one dealing with
Google Scholar--which was in response to a posting of mine and Kath.

For me, to have to access this mailbox every day when something drops
into the basket, and to find that about 2% of the postings meet my
interest is a kind of waste of my time. However, by going to the web
forum (its setup seems to be pretty clean--there are fours sections, 1)
EndNote General, 2) How to, 3) Styles, Filters, and connections, and 4)
product suggestions), I can quickly look into the area I'm interested
in, or I can post a question (same thing here, except the postings in
this list don't get "clotted" into theme areas as easily.

Another aspect: the forum allows one to tag all postings in a forum
section to "read"--which lets me know immediately what is new or not.
And: the discussion threads are easier to follow.

Do you really need to stay on top of all postings about EndNote *as*
they drop in? I can imagine that some folks that are really into EndNote
might prefer that. However, for users that are interested in specific
answers to specific questions, I think the forum concept offers a viable
alternative.

I am subscribed to private and university-collegiate (private list for
profs) platforms, and I would hate to lose the spontaneous communication
they offer. However, if I were to subscribe to a list server that was
devoted to say, use of Word or Excel, I'd go bananas: too much input!!

I don't see any reason why folks couldn't start up a yahoo or google
list server for EndNote issues. 

For my purposes though, I'd say the forum may be the better answer for
me. 

And one more comment if I may: we can already see the moaning and
groaning about the forum concept (although there have been positive
responses too). However, once one has read about the pros and cons, I'm
sure the comments will still be coming in. With the forum concept, I can
choose to read that stuff or not--as the threads are pretty transparent.

So, as the subject line sez: you have the choice! You can use the new
forum, or you can roll your own! Sounds like a win-win situation to me!

FWIW

Best to you all.

-- John