5.0167 E-Journal Searches; E-Reading; E-Job Searching (3/72)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 20 Jun 91 16:46:52 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0167. Thursday, 20 Jun 1991.


(1) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1991 00:27 CDT (21 lines)
From: 6160LACYA@VMS.CSD.MU.EDU
Subject: Journal Searching

(2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 16:56:51 CDT (16 lines)
From: nm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Natalie Maynor)
Subject: Re: 5.0162 Rs: Mail Readers

(3) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 17:43:53 LCL (35 lines)
From: "Dana Cartwright, Syracuse Univ" <DECARTWR@SUVM>
Subject: E-mail for Job Searches

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1991 00:27 CDT
From: 6160LACYA@VMS.CSD.MU.EDU
Subject: Journal Searching

With reference to Stevan Harnad's posting of 14 June:

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) runs a data base
called UnCover. This db contains the tables of contents from some
10,000 journals received by their libraries, and presently has some
600,000+ entries dating from 1988 on. Searching is fairly
straight-forward.

The Internet address for TELNET is PAC.CARL.ORG (192.54.81.128)

MAJOR CAVEAT: You have to have a password to enter the journal searching
area. Speak to your computer or library personnel if you don't have one
for your institution.

Alan F. Lacy
Marquette University
6160lacya@vms.csd.mu.edu
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 16:56:51 CDT
From: nm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Natalie Maynor)
Subject: Re: 5.0162 Rs: Mail Readers

> The UNIX based system here at the U. of Washington has, in addition to
> the usual "rn", a newsreader called "nn" which _can_ be used to read
> mail folders. One cannot respond to postings from within nn, but I
> have found it very useful for previewing postings, sorting and filing
> them. the format is very much more congenial for reading though you
> must still use your usual mailing program to reply or post.

I always use nn (rather than rn) to read the news groups. And I always
respond from within nn. I enter 'f' to post a reply to the group, 'r'
to mail a reply to the individual poster, 'm' to mail to somebody else,
:post to post a new article, etc.
--Natalie (nm1@ra.msstate.edu)
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------42----
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 17:43:53 LCL
From: "Dana Cartwright, Syracuse Univ" <DECARTWR@SUVM>
Subject: E-mail for Job Searches

Graham White recounted his experiences trying to use e-mail in lieu of
the postal service for job-search correspondence, and expressed surprise
at how few institutions took him up on his request.

As a person who does a fair number of job searches each year, I would
simply comment that I would be very reluctant to use e-mail for anything
other than routine chit-chat.

You have to assume that anything you send through the e-mail networks is
being read by many people other than the designated recipient:

a) E-mail goes astray. I have twice gotten e-mail which (I think) was
sent from one student to another at Penn State University (in the
State of Pennsylvania in the United States)--never mind that I'm
at a university several hundred miles away (and a number of network
nodes away)...at any rate, the e-mail wasn't addressed to me, or
even to someone with a similar "id"....
b) There are systems programmers at every node who have complete access
to all e-mail messages. And lots of e-mail winds up written onto
magnetic tapes (typically if a node accumulates too much mail it will
spin some of it off, temporary, to a tape, for transmittal later when
they may be less load).....and this can happen to your e-mail at some
intermediate node you've never even heard of.....
c) E-mail is unreliable. It gets lost. Or delayed.
d) E-mail can be faked. Easily. Therefore, it is best used only for
correspondence in which the motives and/or consequences for errors
(deliberate or accidental) are low.

In many cases (my own, for example), a job search committee has to keep
copies of all correspondence related to the search. E-mail is difficult
to incorporate into what is essentially a paper-based record.