Sender: Rare Books and Special Collections Forum <EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET>
While I was away on my much remarked vacation Peter wrote:
>I notice by the way that the conservation one isn't a "standard"
>listserv. W. Henry (who is noted as its moderator), would you care to
>comment?
I guess it's time to repost the standard DistList propaganda, with
apologies to those of you who have already seen this a thousand times.
(this will follow in a separate posting). I hope any of you who are at
all involved with the preservation of library, archives or museum
materials will sign on.
>An can you do that and remove gum at the same time?
probably not, but I could churn out a nice treatment report that says
the gum provides evidence of provenance and ought to be preserved :-)
Roughly around the same time, someone else wrote:
>I subscribe to the conservation list, and I am not sure that it would
>have been an appropriate forum for that question.
Yes, it would have been and still is. However, since questions of that
sort are often more complex than they seem, we are as likely to point
out as many problems as solutions.
>... It would not surprise me if the map question were not
>posted to that list. The list is heavily moderated by Mr. Henry, and
>it is clear that not everything sent for posting actually gets posted.
Well, it's true that not everything sent gets posted but the number of
postings that don't get through is very small (I think I've 'rejected'
about 3 postings in over 5 years, all for having nothing to do with
conservation. A greater number of items don't get sent out because
a) the question has been asked before and the answer can be found in
the archives (we maintain a rather nice subject listing describing
every mailing since we started in 1987).
b) I am able to provide a satisfactory answer personally (if the
subject is of general interest we normally post a summary)
c) I can point the querier to a better source of info
True, I sometimes delay postings when the question is unclear or
contains errors of fact to give posters then get a chance to clean up a
posting. And of course there aren't any 'please unsubscribe me'
messages.
>... Finally, when he is away, as he has been recently,
>there are no postings at all.
Not so. While it's true that I took a three week vacation (the first
vacation from the list in over 5 years, btw), submissions were
monitored during my absence and 2 postings that contained
time-critical information were sent out.
Hope this clarifies things.
Walter Henry