Managing E-lists at Cornell (Lyris)
An e-list is a way to use e-mail to communicate with a collection of
people through a single e-mail address, typically on a particular topic.
Whenever someone sends an e-mail message to an e-list address, that
message goes out to everyone subscribed to the list.
Participation in e-lists hosted by CIT costs nothing; there are no
fees of any sort. Anyone who has access to e-mail can take advantage
of the service. The service CIT uses is Lyris ListManager.
These pages describe how to create and manage CIT-hosted e-lists. (How can I tell if a particular
list is hosted by CIT?)
If you don't need to know about administering lists, that is, you are
interested in participating as a member in a CIT-hosted e-list, please
see Using E-lists at Cornell.
How E-lists Are Used at Cornell
E-lists can make collaboration and communication easier. Students,
staff, alumni, and faculty at Cornell have discovered many ways to make
use of lists in their classes, work, research, and personal lives.
- Professors and TAs set up class lists to communicate information
to students.
- Departments use electronic lists to share information with staff
members.
- Researchers create discussion lists on topics of mutual interest.
- Committees form lists to discuss issues and cut down on the number
of meetings.
- Student clubs and organizations registered with the Student Activities
Office use lists to keep members informed of their activities.
- Alumni groups have lists for activities related to Cornell alumni
affairs.
One note of clarification: E-lists are a convenient and, usually, quick
method of communicating with a group, but if you require a guaranteed
"right away" delivery, you should not rely solely on lists.
As with all e-mail, delivery occasionally can be delayed.
E-lists Names
All lists hosted by CIT have names that end in "-L"
so that their addresses stand out from personal or department names.
For example, a list for the history department at Cornell might be
called history-L@cornell.edu, in
order to distinguish it from the address history@cornell.edu
which could be the e-mail address for the department office.
- You can use either uppercase or lowercase when sending messages
to the list or sending commands to Lyris. In this guide we follow
the convention of always using an uppercase letter "L" at
the end of the list name. This is simply for clarity; a lowercase
letter "
l" can be mistaken for the numeral
one ( 1 ), an uppercase letter "I", or a vertical line (
| ).
In order to keep list names relatively short, people often choose to
use common abbreviations in their names; you will often see "cu"
in the name of lists running at Cornell. This abbreviation reminds people
that the list was established for use at Cornell.
Since there are literally thousands of lists at Cornell, it can be
hard to figure out which list someone is talking about. For example,
many lists are associated with a particular course, so if someone refers
to "the 234 list," which of these lists might they mean?
Without the exact name, it's impossible to know. Make it a habit to
refer to a list by its complete e-mail address.
- Note: Please do not refer to e-lists as "Listservs."
In the same way that not all tissues are "Kleenex" and not
all photocopies are "Xeroxes," e-list (or mailing list)
is the generic term and "Listserv" is a trademarked name.
So is "ListProc." We don't use those. We use Lyris to manage our e-lists.
Other Methods of Group Communication
E-lists hosted by CIT are only one of several methods used at Cornell
to facilitate group communication. Other methods include:
For example "Cornell Marketplace" is not an e-list. It is
a USENET News group called cornell.marketplace.
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