Re: Paleont. Calendar #1 (part 1)(July 1, '95)[LONG]

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>From: lbowlds@geosociety.org (Larry Bowlds)
>Date: Wed, 5 Jul 95 10:21:40 -0700

>Paleontology Calendar

>	Comments on the Net during the past few months have shown a clear 
>need for a central calendar of events in paleontology.

>	Where are the best places to post this list?

Calendars of Events are GREAT! Every professional society should be
supporting online access to such calendars.

The best place?  NOT posted to discussion lists. The best place to
post a calendar is to a file server, especially if it is a fileserver
that can automatically email the document to people (subscribers) who
have expressed an interest in receiving updates (because not everyone
has www or ftp, but most everyone will have email).

Now, the good news is that there is just such a service available. It
is provided by LISTSERV (L-Soft's listserver; I believe that listproc
by CREN also provides this service). A good example of the use of
LISTSERV to provide a calendar service is the Biological Conservation
calendar of events made available on the Smithsonian Institution's
CONSLINK listserver. Here's how it works.

The calendar owner posts an edition of the calendar on the LISTSERV.
LISTSERV "knows" that the calendar file has been revised, and sends
either 1) the calendar itself to all subscribers, or 2) a notice only
that the calendar file has been revised; it is then up to the subscriber
whether or not to GET the update. Interested parties can subscribe to
either the Automatic File Distribution (AFD) or the File Update Information
(FUI) service.  This service of LISTSERV in _not_ the discussion (message)
list service most people are familiar with; it is a different service
having to do just with file distributions.
Peter