User:Garyvines/sandbox
Mailing list
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
OzArch (mailing list)
 | This is not a Wikipedia article: This is a workpage, a collection of material and work in progress that may or may not be incorporated into an article. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative. |
OzArch is an electronic mailing list whose purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information about research, employment, publications, conferences, and meetings in the field of archaeology related to Australia. The list is based at the University of Liverpool, has over 500 subscribers in several countries and uses the groups.io platform.
Peter Hiscock at ANU created a listserv for Australian archaeologists called AUSARCH-L in 1997, but it was taken down by the university in 2009 following a defamation threat. In 2009, I set up OzArch to replace it, initially on Google Groups, then I shifted it to groups.io in 2023 because of various practical and ethical problems with google. At the time, ozarch seemed a unique term, but now it can be confused with a Brisbane metal fabricator, a Denver architecture firm, or a racehorse. Also, it should not be confused with the very good C14 database Austarch.[1]
The new list has been established via Google Groups which is much more flexible than a traditional email list-serve. You can elect to read posts on the web (like a forum), subscribe via the feed, or receive emails; overall a much better set of alternatives to email-only lists which I find quite restrictive. I was a member of the Ausarch list from ’97 or ’98 until it ended late last year and often found that similar debates and questions would regularly reappear (most frequent being ’where do I buy an !). Hopefully this will now be reduced.
More importantly though the new list is moderated and membership is restricted to people with some sort of specific qualification or interest in archaeology.
In the last couple of months OzArch has passed 2000 posts on 856 topics and has over 500 members (currently 548). However, fewer than a dozen members have been responsible for nearly half the messages. This suggests either the list is only of value to a small group of highly communicable members, or that archaeology in Australia does not have a high degree of interaction outside of set groups (i.e. conversations are kept within the confines of individual corporate, government or academic entities), or that OzArch is not a particularly important medium for communication. Unfortunately I don't have any measure of other communication systems between archaeologists, such as private emails, conversations around the water cooler, coffee machine, etc.; although comparison with the ratio of numbers of people attending and presenting at archaeology conferences suggests that there is a relatively low level of participation in OzArch [2]