On October 17th, the Museum Domain Management Association (MuseDoma)
signed a Sponsorship Agreement with the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the creation of the top-level
Internet domain, .museum.

The full text of this agreement is available at:

     http://www.icann.org/tlds/

This page provides a useful description of ICANN's present action
and the material specific to .museum is located toward the bottom of
the page.

The current status of MuseDoma's initiation of .museum operation is
available at:

     http://musedoma.org/

Particular attention is called to the material about the preliminary
requests for the reservation of subdomain names. These requests have
been accepted since June 30th and this phase of the start-up action
will terminate on October 31st (seen globally, at noon UTC on
November 1st).

The requests thus far submitted, together with those that are
received during the rest of October, will then be processed to
serve as the basis for the first public demonstration of the new
domain. If you would like to participate in this, please visit the
MuseDoma site without delay.

The .museum domain will be operated on a provisional basis for
approximately the next three months before the formal registration
of subdomain names will be initiated. The inclusion of further names
in the demonstration phase will be resumed on November 21st, so
there will be ample time for anyone to apply for participation
subsequent to the conclusion of the first service at the end of this
month.

Each step of the start-up phase will be described in detail on the
MUSEDOMA-DISCUSS e-mail discussion list. This also serves as a forum
for the open discussion of all activity relating to .museum. Futher
information about this list, as well as its archives, may be found
under the heading "Open Forum" on the MuseDoma Web site.

If you wish to subscribe to MUSEDOMA-DISCUSS directly via e-mail
please send a message to:

     [log in to unmask]

On the first and only line of the body of the message write:

     subscribe musedoma-discuss Yourfirstname Yourlastname

using your actual name in the last two places.

Please note that the information relevant to .museum presented on
both the MuseDoma and ICANN Web sites does not yet fully reflect the
new status of the .museum TLD.

Press releases about this decisive event are currently being
circulated. Please do not hestitate to forward this message to your
colleagues in any manner that can increase the museum community's
awareness of the formal establishment of its own dediciated
top-level domain.

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