Re: Definition of List Server

[Thom Randolph <thom -at- HALCYON -dot- COM>]

At 04:42 PM 8/12/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Anybody know a good definition of a list server?
>~~~~~ Bev Lockhart, Documentation Editor for Seattle Lab
>

Bev.

Here's the best I could find on the net. It's at

http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#L-Terms

Turns out that apparently the "correct" wording is a
single word, without the last "e". And, it's someone's
trademark!

Thom Randolph
thom -at- halcyon -dot- com

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Listserv=
  an email system where users "subscribe" to join
  in on group messages. A message sent to the
  listserv is sent to every subscriber's mail box.

  A listserv is similar to an email "bulletin board."
  However, users of bulletin boards do not receive
  the messages in their mail boxes without first
  going to the bulletin board to view a listing of
  messages. There are thousands upon thousands of
  listservs on topics of mutual interest from sewing
  to microbiology. It is common for college courses
  to have a listserv so that instructors and students
  can all communicate easily with group messages. Over
  70,000 interest groups (at this writing) are linked
  at http://www.liszt.com/. Comparisons with bulletin
  boards, email groups, chat rooms, etc. are made in
  the e-mail definition of this glossary.  See e-mail,
  Chat Lines, IRC, USENet, teleconferencing,
  videoconferencing, webcasting, and telephony.

Chris Nolan at Trinity University wrote the following in an email message
on October 7, 1998:

    I was told by my book editor today that L-Soft, the
    owner of the Listserv software, sent a letter to the
    American Library Association about the use of the
    term "listserv" in some recent ALA publications. L-Soft
    claims that the term is trade marked and therefore cannot
    be used as a generic term for these sorts of bulletin
    board/mailing list systems, much like Xerox not being
    used as a generic for photocopying. Although I had only
    used the term once in my manuscript, ALA?s editors felt
    that I should either capitalize the term to refer to the
    L-Soft software or use other terms to describe the more
    general concept.

    Checking L-Soft International?s web site, I see that they
    clearly state that LISTSERV is a trademark of their company.

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