Hello.  No need to do anything yet, but I think some advance
notice is warranted:  Here is an administrative announcement
regarding some up-and-coming changes to SERIALST.

On Tuesday evening, May 20, from @ 5 p.m. to Midnight, Eastern
Daylight Time, SERIALST will migrate from its faithful, old
IBM/VM mainframe computer to a new Unix-based LISTSERV(r)
environment.  During this time, the server will be down and
messages will not be received or transmitted.

If all goes well, Wednesday morning, May 21, will find SERIALST
on the Unix machine and (here's the important part) at a NEW ADDRESS:

                 SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU

The address for sending listserv commands (to subscribe, unsubscribe,
change mailing options, etc.) will also change to:

                 LISTSERV@LIST.UVM.EDU

**** SERIALST subscribers do *not* need to do anything.  Your subscription
         will automatically be transferred to the new machine.  ****

A very exciting part about the transition is that SERIALST's archives
will be moving to a new, robust, searchable web-based database archive
service (no more batch template search jobs or gopher !!).  Otherwise, we
expect that most of the same command structure for interacting with the
list will remain the same (e.g., to subscribe, unsubscribe, set mail to
nomail, digests, index, etc.)

Mail and commands will be forwarded from the old @UVMVM.UVM.EDU to
the new @LIST.UVM.EDU from May 21 (or whenever the change is completed)
until the end of June, when the University of Vermont will disengage
from BITNET.  On Wednesday, May 21, I will remind all subscribers to
begin using the new address.

More details and complete instructions for accessing the new archives
will be posted after the migration is completed and the new service
is ready.

The SERIALST Scope & Purpose documentation and the SERIALST web
pages have not yet been updated and will not be updated until the
the changes are complete.

So, in a sense, this is the end of an era for SERIALST.  After
almost seven years as a BITNET list on a mainframe computer,
SERIALST will become an Internet list on a Unix server.  And
while the Internet address will change .... well, hey, it's the
first time in seven years -- and at least it's not a title change!

So ... stay tuned for more news next week.  In the meantime,
here's to the hope of a happy and stress-free migration.

ciao,
    Birdie MacLennan
    SERIALST Listowner/Moderator    bmaclenn@uvmvm.uvm.edu
    University of Vermont           bmaclenn@zoo.uvm.edu