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Moving the European RSA Newsletter to Electronic Media
ERSA News Discussion List
(RSAI - Liverpool) WWW Information Sources
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CURRENT SITUATION
Information from various sources is accumulated by the
editor, compiled into a master copy, printed (1,300 copies),
mailed in bulk to the section secretaries who send it to
individual members, usually as an attachment to regular mailings.
This leads to DELAYS of up to half a year at the input side,
sometimes several weeks and even months at the output side.
Information may be as much as nine months old when it reaches the
individual member.
COSTS are incurred:
a) at the central level for (some) typing, printing, clerical assistance
(collation of publishers' inserts and insertion into newsletters) and
distribution (bulk mailing);
b) at the section level (mailings to members).
WHAT WE SHOULD TRY TO ACHIEVE
1) to get information to the individual members as soon as possible; and
2) to reduce costs.
SUGGESTED SOLUTION
I suggest that we move towards the use
of a moderated e-mail discussion list (see ERSA News Discussion
List below) as a means of enabling the transfer of information
in the future. The moderator of the list will be the
editor/publisher of the newsletter. Because of the process of
moderation or supervision exercised by the editor, this list will
have the same level of 'authority' as the printed
newsletter.
ADVANTAGES
A major advantage of this approach is that
the information can be disseminated at 'zero cost',
immediately, to those who wish to receive it. There is no
restriction on the amount of information, no need to fill pages.
Information can (and should) be archived and indexed for later
use and easy retrieval (WWW, WAIS). If we keep subscription to
the discussion list open, so that everybody who wants the
information can receive it, we will generate an advertising
effect for ERSA and its sections.
PROBLEMS
During a transition
phase the electronic and the printed versions will have to exist
in parallel. How can we encourage members to request only one
version of the newsletter? Currently there is no incentive for
members to pass the information ("I don't need the printed
version") up to ERSA. According to the current structure, we are
likely to produce an electronic version and the same number of
printed copies as today.
TWO POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
1) We may centralize delivery (or at least the production of mailing
labels) and eliminate those who subscribe to the electronic
newsletter.
2) We may transfer printing and distribution to the
sections by mailing them just one copy of the camera-ready copy
for reproduction. According to this strategy, the sections will
have an incentive to encourage their members to switch to the
electronic version. However, what do we do with sections where
e-mail is not yet common?
Both strategies are closely related to the 'electronic member directory'. They should be discussed in connection with the future of the electronic membership directory and strategies for that. For example, the directory could serve as the basis of a fuller membership database, matching the records of RSAI membership held in Illinois. This could be used in the production of individual address labels for mailing purposes (e.g. for mailing the printed copy of the newsletter). However, the cost and other implications of the scale of the administrative/clerical tasks associated with the maintenance of such a database would need to be examined closely.
ADVANTAGES OVER CURRENT SITUATION
1. immediate delivery
2. no cost for reproduction and delivery
3. easy to get to earlier "copies" of the newsletter
4. archived information can be searched
5. supports the electronic member directory
6. supports other parts of ERSA-operation that may be transferred
to electronic media (conference proceedings, electronic journal, conference
organization, etc.)
The list is moderated which means that
only mail that has been inspected by Gunther Maier will be
forwarded to subscribers - to the list. In order to subscribe to
the list, users should send an email to:
listserv@wu-wien.ac.at
with the statement
subscribe ersa-news [full name] in the body of the message,
where the subscriber's full or familiar name is substituted for [full name].
... return to Contents?
The first relates to the European Regional Science
Association (ERSA) and the second to the Regional Science
Association International: British and Irish Section (RSAIBIS).
Both are operating stably and are accessible from the RSAI-Liverpool 'home page',
the URL of which is as follows:
http://www.liv.ac.uk/~pjbbrown/rsai.html
Some features are still operating only experimentally (especially use of 'forms' - see below) and increasing use is to be made of facilities supported by more recent versions of Netscape (2.02 now - and 3.0 later when security problems of beta OK) (e.g. 'tables').
Any technical problem in gaining access to these sources should be reported in an email message to www@liv.ac.uk. Any errors in, or omissions from, the information sources should be reported by email to pjbbrown@liv.ac.uk.
The ERSA source includes information about:
a) the ERSA (adapted from promotional leaflet);
b) the names/addresses of key figures in the ERSA;
c) a link to the home page of the Local Organizing Committee of the
Zuerich Congress - via which the most up-to-date information about
Congress arrangements, local travel in Zuerich, etc can be
obtained.
d) the Call for Papers for the 37th European RSA
Congress - to take place in Rome, Italy in August 1997;
e) the entire contents of the January 1996 issue (18) of the European
RSA Newsletter - and this issue (19) - long before it reaches you
in printed form (see above);
f) a pointer to the RSA: Regional Science Association menu -
and thus to the European RSA Directory
of Members information - that is held on the University of
Economics gopher server in Vienna.
As an RSAI member, you are urged to check your Directory entry and inform Gunther Maier of any error. Alternatively, follow the instructions provided by the Vienna server in order to add your own entry to the European Directory. Please note that individual Sections/Associations are encouraged to establish and maintain their own membership directories.
The RSAIBIS source includes information about:
a) RSAIBIS activities and benefits of membership.
b) the Call for Papers for the 28th RSAIBIS Annual Conference to
take place in Falmouth, September 1997.
c) an initial version of a (mainly, but
not exclusively, British and Irish Section based) Directory of
MPhil/ PhD Research in Regional Science.
The latter is intended to enable an impression to be gained of the
range of research
topics being pursued in the regional science field, and
facilitate the format- ion of collaborative links between young
researchers. The Directory is to be developed ultimately on a
Europe-wide basis. However, as a first step, individual Sections
and Associations are encouraged to create their own systems,
using standard, or consistently specified, headings (similar to
entries in the European RSA Directory) as follows:
1) Name: 2) Address : 3) Phone: 4) Fax: 5) Email: 6) Thesis Title:
7) Start/End Dates: 8) Supervisor:
For further information, please contact the Secretary of your Section/Association. Meanwhile, a recently enhanced experimental www-accessible questionnaire data capture screen has been created to enable entries to be added to the Directory directly by prospective contributors. This can be reached via the RSAIBIS home page at: http://www.liv.ac.uk/~pjbbrown/rsaibis.html
It operates along similar lines to the facility via which members can add (or amend) their own entries to the Vienna database version of the European RSA Directory - reached via [Note: .regsci]: http://osiris.wu-wien.ac.at/regsci/.regsci.html/ersaform.html
Finally, members are reminded that they can be kept
informed of developments of interest, or inform others directly
of issues of mutual concern, by subscribing to the regional
science list REGSC-L. This is achieved simply by sending a
one-line email message as follows:subscribe REGSC-L member's name
(<--- your name) to listserv@wvnvm.bitnet
... return to Newsletter Contents?
Click here to access the information about the activities of the Regional Science Association International which is maintained on, or can be reached from the Liverpool system.
This version : 3 February 1997 [Main Amendment: HTML Syntax]
Please inform Peter Brown (based in the Department of Civic Design)of any errors in, or omissions from, the material that is mounted on the RSAI-Liverpool WWW source - ideally by email - by sending a message to:
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