>There has been discussion about breaking up Museum-L into more specialized
>groups (including a CIDOC list for museum documentation). When these proposals
>first flashed by I did not think it was the way to go, but now that my service
>provider has said they can't support the cost of the number of messages coming
>from Museum-L, I wish there were smaller lists that I could continue with.
 
Museum-L does generate more traffic than any other list I subscribe too as
well. Eventually every list with as much breadth as this has to face this
decision. In the library community (although perhaps larger than the museum
community), they have not stuck with just PACS-L, but split off into
ImageLib, Web4Lib, etc. SIG's can be very beneficial by focusing
discussions, and saving time.
 
If I remember, the folks at Carnegie had offered to host a museum-Web type
list. If they still are interested, I can now say that I definitely think
it would be a good thing (although I would broaden it to museum-technology
and let it also split if it needed to later). There is also the CIDOC
suggestion above. I know of others who have left Museum-L because of the
amount of traffic, some of it irrelevant to them. Perhaps it's better to
have multiple lists for museum folks than to lose them altogether because
of lack of time (or resources; above) to sift through a hundred messages a
day.
 
I also value the cross-over that happens on museum-l, and there are costs
to creating spin-off lists, but growing pains always come with a dose of
ambivilance.....it might just be a worthy experiment to see if it really is
harmful or beneficial for us.
 
 
Richard Rinehart              | University Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive
Information Systems Manager   | University of California at Berkeley
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