Hi all --- First, I want to applaude John Chadwick for both the amazing work that he has done with museum-l and for his patience with a group that sometimes fails to realize how much work running a list of this volume can be. I mean it folks, we owe John a HUGE thanks. He has proven again and again to be exactly the kind of person NEEDED to make the Internet work... caring, generous in time and thought, and responsive to the needs of subscribers. I have been thinking that Museum-L has about three separate purposes and that maybe we should have three separate moderators to deal with those purposes... Here are my thoughts on those purposes. I would welcome corrections or other purposes that I have neglected to mention: 1.) Museum-l provides a place for general announcements of new and upcoming events both in real museums and in more "virtual" realms. This would include postings concerning meetings, museum exhibitions, new WWW servers, calls for papers, etc... 2.) Museum-l provides a forum for discussion of important non-technological issues concerning all aspects of museum management and maintenance. The range of issues is obviously vast but also exceedingly important. Some issues recently brought up include cultural sensitivity, use of white out to mark specimens, etc... 3.) Explicitly computer orientated discussions both technological and non-tehcnological concerning the role these technologies play in the future of museums... obviously this includes the Internet, database structuring and other issues. We should have a monitor for each one of these divisions if we are to have monitors at all. I am a little concerned that more anarachy will ensue concerning the issue of moderation than would be resolved by having moderators. I guess I feel pretty darn ambivalent. Cheers, Robert Guralnick | Museum of Paleontology | University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 | [log in to unmask] | (510) 642-9696