One convenient tool for maintaining dialogue with the outside world or with a geographically disparate internal group is the internet mailing list. Lists can be used for announcements of interest, to facilitate collaboration, and for a variety of other purposes.

The SSRL VMS cluster offers the industrial-strength mailng list manager LISTSERV, which offers excellent features (including SPAM detection, subscription confirmation email, automatic digest creation, and others) and reliability. (For a full discussion of LISTSERV capabilities and features, check the LISTSERV web site.

You can be the owner of a list. You mange the list by email from any email client - Outlook, Eudora, Communicator, or VMS Mail, so you can use this list whether you're on the Exchange server or reading mail from VMS. If you wish, the list can be archived and the archive made available over the web. The list can either be one-way (an announcement list, which nobody but the owner can post to) or two-way (a discussion list), public (anybody can subscribe) or private (the owner approves all subscription requests.)