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Post script and small apology



Listers,

Since my reason for posting yesterday was at least partially my
bewilderment in face of the actions taken by software in the absence of
human input, I find it additionally chagrining (is that a word?) to see
that two consecutive posts sent with the same mail program from the same PC
to the same listserv a few minutes apart should look totally different in
format. LotusNotes, in its web version, has some sort of Java issues that
throw my computer into a tizzy and one never knows what will appear at the
recipient's end. To make matters even stranger, I sometimes see a posting
of mine on a list that looks totally chicken-scratched with HTML doodads
all over the place and then later on I see someone quoting the same posting
of mine and it looks just fine.

To return to archive content, I hope that some listers would be able to
wade through and decipher my first posting in which I ponder the issues
raised by an automated message in the previous digest.  If you just didn't
want to struggle through the markup mess, here it is (again) with the marks
painstakingly removed by hand:

<Date:    Tue, 6 Aug 2002 12:09:24 -0400
<From:    Peter Hirsch <phirsch@NYPL.ORG>
<Subject: (Unintentionally) interesting item fro ARCHIVE digest
<
<Dear colleagues,
<
<It may just be me, but I felt that the auto-generated response to Rick
Barry's ARCHIVES posting that I enclose below says an awful lot about a
number of <issues facing archivists/librarians in the era of electronic
access.In case it slipped by you
<
<<-----------------------------
<<Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 09:38:05 -0400
<<From: Karen L. Jania kljania@UMICH.EDU
<<Subject: Re: Update of rbarry.com/mybestdocs.com website: August 4, 2002
<<We are in receipt of your request. Due to the current backlog, it will be
approximately three weeks before you receive a response from one of the
Reference <<staff. Thanks for your interest in our collections.
<<
<<Sincerely,
<<
<<Karen L. Jania
<<kljania@umich.edu
<<
<<Acting Head, Access and Reference Department, Bentley Historical Library
<<Phone: (734) 764-3482 &nbsp; &nbsp;Fax (734) 936-1333
<<1150 Beal Ave., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2113
<<http://www.umich.edu/~bhl/bhl/refhome/refhome.htm
<<<* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
<<<On Mon, 5 Aug 2002, Rick Barry wrote:
<<<Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 03:49:15 EDT
<<<From: Rick Barry RICKBARRY@AOL.COM
<<<To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
<<<Subject: Update of rbarry.com/mybestdocs.com website: August 4, 2002
<<<
<<<Dear Colleagues:
<<<
<<<Please excuse cross postings.
<<
<<Here, in the interest of brevity, I mercifully delete the remainder of
Rick's (long) posting that was robotically bounced back to the list (I'm
not sure why it <<appears that this specific item got bounced back. If the
party at the U. of M. subscribes to the digest, then I don't know why only
this part appeared and if they <<don't subscribe to the digest, why doesn't
the list get an answer to every single individual posting. Maybe I am wrong
in assuming that the response was <<the result of an automated process and
it truly was considered a reference query to be dealt with later.)
<<
<<Probably there is an aspect to this that is so obvious that I simply
can't see it. In any case it is of interest that there is a three week wait
for a response from <<reference staff. As a matter of discussion, I am
curious if this is typical of archival institutions and if members of this
list see this waiting time increasing as a <<result of the snowballing
popularization of e-mail. Also, do institutions (officially or informally)
set priority of response based on the medium (phone, letter, <<e-mail, in
person) by which the query was transmitted and what other <<considerations
are factored in?
<<
<<I guess I did raise the matter of brevity, so I leave off here,
<<
<<Peter Hirsch
<<
<<Cataloger (with an archival bent) for NYPL

Apologies to those who read this the first time and don't need to see it
again.

Peter Hirsch

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