South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association
Fostering the Art and Science of Health Sciences Library Service
SCCMLA List
The SCCMLA discussion list is hosted by the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and may be used to post professional discussions, questions, and job postings. Note: This list is moderated.
Index
Two Email Addresses Used by SCCMLA for Different Purposes
There are two email addresses used for SCCMLA:
- Listserv: sccmla-request@LISTS.OU.EDU; use this address for listserv commands (e.g., subscribing, unsubscribing, etc.)
- List itself: sccmla@speedy.ouhsc.edu; use this address to post messages
Subscribe to SCCMLA List
- Send the request to: sccmla-request@LISTS.OU.EDU.
- Leave the subject line blank.
- In the body of the email, include only the following information with nothing else (do not include your signature bloc):
Subscribe sccmla firstname lastname
- You will receive a message with a subject similar to Command confirmation request.
- You have 48 hours to respond or the request is automatically cancelled.
- To confirm the execution of your request, simply click on the link in the message OR reply and type "ok" (without the quotes) as the text of your message (the subject line is left blank).
- You may receive a message from the listserv that your request has been forwarded to the list owners. This is a formality – approval is automatic.
- Once the response has been processed, you will receive a confirmation email.
Post to the SCCMLA List
- To post to the listserv send to: sccmla@speedy.ouhsc.edu.
- Attachments up to 2MB are allowed.
- Reply will send to the individual that created the post instead of the entire list.
- Reply All will send to the the entire list, as well as the individual that created the post.
Unsubscribe from the SCCMLA List
- Send the request to: sccmla-request@LISTS.OU.EDU.
- Leave the subject line blank.
- In the body of the email include only the following information with nothing else (including signature):
SIGNOFF sccmla
Review Your SCCMLA List Subscriber Options
- Send the request to: sccmla@speedy.ouhsc.edu.
- Leave the subject line blank.
- In the body of the email include only the following information with nothing else (including signature):
QUERY sccmla firstname lastname
- Please Note: You must use the same name used to subscribe.
- You will be prompted to confirm the command; click on the link to approve it.
Edit Your SCCMLA List Subscriber Options
- Send the request to: sccmla-request@LISTS.OU.EDU.
- Leave the subject line blank.
- Use the following command in the body of the email:
SET sccmla option1 option2 (etc.)Example: SET sccmla REPRO NOACK
- Note that you could also send this as two commands, one per line in the body:
SET sccmla REPRO
SET sccmla NOACK - The LISTSERV will respond with a message telling you that your options have been updated, along with a listing of your current settings now that you’ve made the change.
Subscriber Options
Mail/NOMail
Setting this option to Mail indicates that you will receive mail from the list. NOMail is the complementary command that stops mail but leaves you subscribed to the list. (NOMail is often a good compromise for users who are leaving the office for vacation or on extended business trips and who don't want a full mailbox on their return.) The format of the messages received is controlled by the DIGEST/INDEX/NODIGEST/NOINDEX options (see below).
Please note: If you use an auto-responder while on vacation without setting your subscription options to NOMail, your "vacation" messages may bounce back to LISTSERV and you may be "served off" from LISTSERV when you return. This is because LISTSERV will be unable to process the message from your auto-responder and will consider it an error. Being "served off" simply means that any commands you send to LISTSERV will be ignored until someone else sends a SERVE command on your behalf.
DIGest/NODIGest
Causes the subscriber to receive one posting per digest cycle (typically daily) rather than individual messages as they are processed by LISTSERV. The MAIL/NOMAIL option controls whether messages should be delivered, and the DIGEST/INDEX/NODIGEST/NOINDEX option controls the format in which messages should be delivered. Thus, switching to NOMAIL and back to MAIL does not destroy the DIGEST/INDEX/normal delivery setting; it simply determines whether or not LISTSERV should send any list mail to you. To provide as much compatibility with older syntax as possible, the four options operate as follows:
- DIGest: enable digest delivery mode (which negates INDEX), enable mail delivery.
- INDEX: enable index delivery mode (which negates DIGEST), enable mail delivery
- NOMAIL: disable mail delivery.
- Mail: restore mail delivery, without altering the digest/index/normal delivery setting
Please note that in extreme cases, subscribers using the DIGEST option may receive more than one digest per cycle if the digest limit is reached before the end of the cycle.
ACK/NOACK/MSGack
These three command words control the level of acknowledgment you receive when posting to the list.
- ACK causes LISTSERV to send a short confirmation message to the sender of the postings when the post has been received and distributed.
- NOACK disables the confirmation feature for the sender.
- MSGack is essentially obsolete; if you do not have BITNET/NJE connectivity to the LISTSERV host in question, setting a list to MSGack is equivalent to NOACK.
REPro/NOREPro
This option controls whether or not you will get a copy of your posts back from the list after they are processed.
Generally, if your mail program is configured to file copies of your outgoing mail, or if you have one of the acknowledgment options (ACK/MSGack) enabled, this option should be set to NOREPro.
If, on the other hand, you are set to NOACK and you mail program doesn't keep a copy of outgoing mail, this option should probably be set to REPro.
Listserv Etiquette
Always think before sending any message! Ask yourself a few simple questions:
- Who is getting the message? Carefully check who your mail program intends to send the message to, and make sure this is where you wanted it to go. It is easy to click on the wrong icon, press the wrong key, misunderstand the meaning of a help file, or otherwise do something that will make your computer send the message to the wrong people.
- How well do you know these people? Can you trust people you have never met in person not to forward your comments to someone else, or to a list? And if they did, whose reputation would suffer the most: yours for saying these things, or theirs for forwarding without your permission?
- What is the worst thing that can happen to you if this message is used against you? Computers are not perfect, and they sometimes do unpredictable things to perfectly valid messages. It may be a rare occurrence, but it happens. Any system manager will have a lot of juicy stories to tell you about messages that were forwarded to him because they caused some system problem or other, and whose contents could have made a couple people lose their job if it had been shown to the right person. System managers normally are ethical people, but do you really want to rely on that?
- Have you removed extraneous information not germane to the discussion? Examples of this include copies of previous postings included by your mail program or long signature files.
You want to ask yourself these questions anyway, even if the message has nothing to do with LISTSERV, or even if the list is set up to reply privately by default. In a non-computer situation, you would probably look around to see if someone can overhear you. Just use that same reflex to look around the list of recipients and decide if you can trust these people with what you said. If you develop this habit, you will never send to a list by mistake.