Using the @World Communications Forum
Welcome to the Public Library and Communications Center for the @ccess on the Web. This portion of @ccess on the Web is currently handled through a free subscription arrangement with eGroups. It offers a number of useful capabilities which are introduced and explained briefly below.
Final point, this time on the choice of materials to send along with your communications. Please do not simply copy and pass on the content of all previous communications. Nobody, nobody likes to wade through this stuff. Moreover, it obscures the point of your message for those whose time is important. Where you need to cite an earlier note for context purposes, please do this in a sparing and structured way. We will all appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Active Participation?
If you intend to participate in the collaborative effort, including email exhanges with the other group members or the posting of materials to the Library or Links & Media sections, please to be sure to read this section carefully. In addition we suggest that you give a good look at the @World Forum Toolkit which provides further background and use hints for the multiple functions and utitilies offered here.
Participation in the @World Forum means receiving all the messages of the list into your own email box. To become a member of @ccess on the Web you are invited to send an empty email to access-forum-subscribe@egroups.com, or even easier simply click the "Subscribe" button just be-low. After a short while you will receive a confirmation, unless there is a technical problem with your address. When you have signed up you can elect to receive feedback from this site in any of four forms: 
Participation in the @Forum
(a) Individual emails,
Most of you may find one of the last three options more convenient.
If you wish to leave the list at any time, send an email to access-forum-unsubscribe@egroups.com.
(b) Daily summary digest;
(c) Daily full digest, or
(d) Read it on the Web.
Messages Procedures & Etiquette
We would ask you to be extremely careful about distinguishing between (a) personal messages (such as a thank you note, a specific question or an observation intended for this or that person) which are best addressed to your individual correspondent and (b) communications to the group as a whole. For these last please recall that our members are very busy people and we want to make sure that whatever comes out of this forum (i) they do not receive more than 1 or 2 messages a day on average and (ii), more important, that what is distributed to the group is quite literally "exception information", i.e., communications which address issues which are of high common interest. I hate to say it, but when we see people being a bit too casual in their choice of mode, we actually go in and pick off what we think to be a bit too personal and indicate this to them as such. This may strike you as a bit priggish on our part and indeed is a bit of a bore to actually do, but we think it's better that than overloading people who have a lot of real work to do and who see this as a useful tool and not one more wasteful Internet chore.
Retaining Subject Headings
Once a discussion of any given topic has got underway, it becomes important for us all to continue to respect and retain the original subject heading. This is because this heading in one of the main ways in which we can recall any given dialogue and exchange around that topic, a process of recall which we believe is extremely important to the extent to which this collective intellectual patrimony is available to be mined for subsequent uses. Likewise, if you note that the subject heading is preceded by a FWD: or Re: in any given case, it's a good idea to delete this so that your message will enter into the correct repertory. Thanks for giving this your attention.
The group's policy is NOT to allow attachments to group email, bearing in mind that some members have slow connections which can be a problem for the larger files that we now often tend to share, as well as to offer protection against viruses. On the other hand, such materials can be highly useful, so we have made provision for them as well. It works as follows:
Attachments
If this topic might be of interest to those who access your own Web pages, you may wish to consider inserting the following button (which you can of course tailor for your own taste and needs) on your site to give them easiest access to this discussion and exchange space. If you add the following html text to your home page, it will have a button to help your visitors subscribe to @World Carshare. To see the html text, press the right mouse button and select "Source". Then you will find the text between the two rows of asterisks* a bit further down. Contact us if you do not manage to find the routines for doing this easily here.
An @ccess on the Web Button for Your Home Page
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Posting Your Future Events
Be sure to check the Coming Events link on the menu. And be assured that we all certainly want to hear from you concerning your plans, accomplishments, strategies and views. That is what this cooperative activity is all about.
A Closing Word on eGroups
For the last two years we have been using eGroups as the instrument for this central communications and information storage function. We chose to do this because eGroups provided useful functionality in support of our independent cooperative program, and because it was free (bearing in mind that we carry out all these programs under The Commons without any form of external financial support, so money is scarce). The only inconvenience of this arrangement was the publicity that appeared on the site and in the messages, but this was discrete so consdiered by us as a bearable inconvenience under the circumstances.
Recently however, there has been a change of style in eGroups and we are not sure that we like it. We find that the new look of the site has become more intrusive and on a number of grounds less agreeable to live with. So if you have any good thoughts for on this, don't be shy. We want to hear from you.
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Updated 1 Mayl 2000