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jESSE is a listserv discussion group that, since 1994, promotes discussion of library and information science education issues in a world-wide context. It addresses issues of curricula, administration, research, and education theory and practice as they relate to information science issues in general, and in general academia as the membership feels so moved. It is one of the primary outlets for faculty position announcements in LIS. Specific queries on lost resources and other minutia are welcome, as are broader questions for general discussion.

While anyone can join the listserv, messages sent to subscribers are moderated.

The listserv also serves as the official electronic "channel" for the Association for Library and Information Science Education, because of its widespread reach - and by request from the Association. It is, however, NOT a project of ALISE. It is an independent project moderated by Dr. Gretchen Whitney of the University of Tennessee School of Information Sciences, and any questions regarding its composition or operation should be directed to her at gwhitney@utk.edu.

To subscribe to jESSE, send a message to:

listserv@listserv.utk.edu

with nothing in the subject line and just this text in the message:

subscribe jesse John Steinbeck

If you are not John Steinbeck, substitute your own name.

You may also subscribe via the Web at the web interface.

To unsubscribe from jESSE, send a message to:

listserv@listserv.utk.edu

with nothing in the subject line and just this text in the message:

unsubscribe jesse

Note that you do not have to include your name - the listserv software will figure out who you are from your e-mail header.

You may also ubsubscribe via the Web at the Web interface. Note that if you have changed accounts, this may not work.

To send messages to the membership of the jESSE listserv, send a message to:

jesse@listserv.utk.edu

with an informative subject line and whatever you wish in the text of the message.

As of 1996, a poster must have been also a subscriber to post messages to the list. This restriction was put in place to inhibit spamming. This restriction was removed in 1997 with the shift to a moderated list.

Sometimes you can't get to the account under which you first subscribed to jESSE. In that case, send an e-mail to gwhitney@utk.edu and I'll delete the old subscription account and add the new one.

jESSE is moderated: if you send a message to the listserv, it will come to me directly, and you will get confirmation that it has been sent to me. This is only to keep down spamming, irrelevant advertising, duplicate messages, personal messages and the like. I don't edit for content at all. About 200 messages a day are caught; all are in the above categories.

The archives are searchable and viewable in chronological order at the archive at http://listserv.utk.edu/archives/jesse.html.

Send messages to jESSE in text in the body of an e-mail message. Messages with attachments are NOT forwarded to the jESSE listserv. Not everyone has the same software that you do, so they may not be able to decode your message. These documents cause excessive bandwidth stress - one recent one-page attachment for example consumed 50K, another consumed over a megabyte. In the latter case, with over 1700 subscribers, the message would have consumed huge megabytes across the network for one message. In text format, these messages consumed less than 5K. If you want to preserve the "pretty" format, create a Web document or a .pdf file and send us the URL. Please think about your electronic footprint.

Some folks still pay by the byte received, and some folks still use text-based mail clients - be courteous.

The jESSE listserv was named after Jesse Shera, well known luminary and theoretician in library and information science, and, a female Jesse, a significant contributor to the LIS education field, whose last name at the moment escapes me. No, there is not a decent biographical sketch on either of these on the web. If anyone knows of a public-domain photo of Shera, please let me know and I'll add it to the page. Stay tuned and check in at the Dead Germans resource.

The letter configuration "jESSE" is an unregistered service mark. It comes from my own manual habits - my right hand is faster than my left, so I typically hit the "j" unshifted with my right hand, then my right catches up to hit the shift key, and I hit the rest of the characters with my left - shifted. It's weird, but it's mine.

As of 10 February 2005, the jESSE listserv included over 1200 members, representing 100% of ALA-accredited schools of LIS and 24 countries. These countries include Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand - and the US.

The complementary list ELEASAI, which was narrowly focused on research interests in the field, was taken down as of 1 July 1997 due to lack of use. VIFLIS, the ASIS - SIG III (International Information Issues) sponsored list, the Virtual International Faculty in Library and Information Science, also was taken down on 1 July 1997 due to lack of use.

The Moderator's Home Page
The Listserv Home Page

The listowner of jESSE can be reached at:

gwhitney@utk.edu
Dr. Gretchen Whitney, School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN 37996. Tel 423-974-7919; Fax 423-974-4967.

Translations from AltaVista Translation Service.

Page updated 15 May 2008.