Hello.  For anyone who is birthday-conscious, SERIALST turned
4 years old about an hour ago.  The logs from Oct. 1990 indicate
that our first tentative message was sent to the list on Oct. 18,
at @ 11:00 EDT.  What started as a small, open grassroots kind
of forum for sharing serials concerns has turned into a moderated,
international forum with more than 1900 subscribers in 32 countries.
When the list was first started, I'd envisioned a forum on which to
ask for help on some of the most vexing and confounding serials cataloging
concerns I was encountering at work.  Since most of my best and favorite
contacts were miles (hence, long-distance phone calls) from the
University of Vermont, electronic communications seemed like
the most economical solution to keeping the workflow moving.

While on some days I now wonder if SERIALST helps or hinders my
overall workflow (that's a grin), it has been gratifying to be able
to offer this service, and to be working collectively as a group
in building a searchable archive of discussions that addresses some of
our day-to-day concerns.  Not only do serials cataloging questions
get answered, but it's been interesting and useful to learn about
other aspects of serials work -- and how these other areas may or
may not (yet) tie into my changing workflow patterns and questions in
Vermont.

Although some of the editorial decisions involved in running the list
have not always been easy (and I know some of you have not always
agreed with some of our decisions in posting, or not posting messages),
we have done our best to run a quality list by adhering to a basic
Scope & Purpose statement.

I would like to acknowledge SERIALST's Associate Moderators --
Ann Ercelawn (Vanderbilt University) and Marcia Tuttle (University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill) -- who have given invaluable backup
support and advice over the years.

As we move toward year 5, I have two requests of subscribers:
Please keep your addresses current (for every message that goes
out on SERIALST, my listowner account can receive from anywhere
from 5 (on good days) to 15 (on bad days) error reports or returned
messages for undelivered mail on the same message).

My other request is to remember that SERIALST is not a forum for the
trade or exchange of duplicate, wanted, or unwanted serials.  There
was a flurry of discussion last month re. duplicate & exchange services
that are offered on the networks.  SERIALST is not one of them --
but if anyone wanted to compile a summary listing of freely available
networked sources, we would be happy to post (several were noted in last
month's SERIALST archives).

Finally, I am about to forward to the list (in a separate message)
the latest SERIALST Scope & Purpose statement.  Generally, this
information is posted every other month (or more frequently if the
information changes or the editors receive inordinate amounts of
off-scope messages).  The most important change to note in the
latest S&P, is that the address of SERIALST's gopher pathway
to its archives has changed slightly.  If you use the gopher
service to search the archives, please check out the new information.

Final and biggest thanks go to SERIALST's subscribers for making the
ongoing exchange of information possible on the list during these
last 4 years.  I leave you with a view of the latest SERIALST subscriber
count ....

Regards,

    Birdie MacLennan                bmaclenn@uvmvm.bitnet
    SERIALST Listowner/Moderator    bmaclenn@uvmvm.uvm.edu
    University of Vermont           bmaclenn@moose.uvm.edu
---------
SERIALST Subscriber Statistics 10/18/94:

*  Country        Subscribers
*  -------        -----------
*  Australia         58
*  Austria            1
*  Canada           121
*  Denmark            2
*  Egypt              1
*  France             3
*  Germany            8
*  Great Britain     34
*  Greece             1
*  Hongkong           9
*  Ireland            3
*  Israel             8
*  Italy              3
*  Japan              6
*  Korea              1
*  Mexico             1
*  Netherlands       16
*  New Zealand        8
*  Norway             1
*  Poland             1
*  Puerto Rico        1
*  Singapore          3
*  Slovenia           1
*  South Africa       1
*  Spain              3
*  Sweden             9
*  Switzerland        2
*  Taiwan             8
*  Thailand           1
*  USA             1528
*  ??? (3])           1
*  ???               19
*
* Total number of "concealed" subscribers:        44
* Total number of users subscribed to the list: 1863  (non-"concealed" only)
* Total number of countries represented:          32  (non-"concealed" only)
* Total number of local node users on the list:    5  (non-"concealed" only)
*