Using 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 CIT-hosted e-lists 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 join, participate in, customize your subscription
to, and leave CIT-hosted e-lists. (How
can I tell if a particular list is hosted by CIT?)
If you are interested in setting up a new e-list, please see Managing
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.
Names of E-lists
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 mailing 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 Comunication
E-lists hosted on the CIT E-list Server are only one of several methods
used at Cornell to facilitate group communication. Other methods include:
- Course
Info
- USENET
News
- Other e-list servers (that is, non-Cornell)
- Direct e-mail (from you to a group of recipients)
If the forum you are looking for can not be found among the lists hosted
on the CIT E-list Server, perhaps it can be found in one of these other
places. For example "Cornell Marketplace" is not an e-list.
It is a USENET News group called cornell.marketplace.
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