The Park Library

NewsLib: Past and Present

Prepared by Barbara Semonche, NewsLib Listowner

1999 is the year the News Division of SLA is celebrating its 75th anniversary. While this Division claims a long and distinguished history, NewsLib is a newcomer. It isn't even the first electronic discussion list for our Division. J-FORUM has that honor. J-FORUM was the bulletin board brainchild of Pete Basofin and Nora Paul. Nora launched the prototype on CompuServe in the late 1980s. Despite strong promotional efforts, J-FORUM did not enlist widespread participation from our Division members. Fewer than 20 members signed on. A project ahead of its time, J-FORUM was discontinued after a couple of years.

In September 1993, Pete and Nora urged me to undertake the responsibility of hosting an electronic mailing list for the News Division on the Internet. The academic computing facility on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, SunSITE (in 1999 the host became MetaLab, agreed to act as the host listserver at no cost because of NewsLib's association with the School of Journalism and Mass Communication Library.

NewsLib made it debut on September 15, 1993. For the next few months the number of subscribers inched toward 25. Announcements about NewsLib and how to subscribe were published in NewsLibraryNews. By the time of the SLA annual conference in June, 1994 (Atlanta), the number of subscribers exceeded 100. NewsLib was on its way toward becoming a viable form of rapid, interactive communication not only for News Division members but for many others in related professional fields in the United States and internationally.

Over the years confusion erupts over how to pronounce NewsLib's name. The name is a shortened version of News Library and so is pronounced with a long "i;" however, as listowner I've never launched a "policing" about the exact pronounciation. How to spell it is another thing. NewsLib is not copyrighted, but it is case sensitive. That is cap "N" and cap "L." There have been discussions about "licensing" them, but so far I've resisted them. It may be time to reconsider, however.

Detailed instructions on NewsLib's commands can be found here.

Now, let's take a look at some of the figures as of January 1999. Here are some comparative numbers for the past three years.

                                     1997            1998            1999
                                     ____            ____            ____

     TOTAL NewsLib SUBSCRIBERS:      740             881             1,038

     INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIBERS:      120             123               141

     NUMBER OF COUNTRIES:             21              24                23

[Besides the United States, you'll discover Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Maylasia,Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Zaire among several others.]

SUBSCRIBERS TO NewsLib BY DOMAIN (as of January 1999):

            International    141
            .com             623
            .edu             101
            .gov               8
            .mil               1
            .net             110
            .org              54
                          ________
                   TOTAL:  1,138

I offer a deep bow to the extraordinary troops at SunSITE (and subsequently, MetaLab) who are responsible for providing the technology to keep NewsLib running. We've had some exciting times (recall the avalanche of literally thousands of "cascading" messages in April 1996?) and it was those talented people who kept the communication open then and the disasters to a minimum ever since.

But I also want to salute the extraordinarily talented and generous news professionals (news librarians, media researchers, journalists, vendors to mention just a few of our national and international subscribers) who keep NewsLib vital and current with valuable insight, information and experience on issues and trends in this deadline-frenzied, data-driven, ethically-challenged professional of ours. Good luck and continued success to all of you!

Special Libraries Assoc.