Chronicle has an article suggesting that the e-mail list is dead as a form of scholarly communication. It quotes (twoutes?) an ex-AIR-Ler, David Silver, : http://beta.chronicle.com/article/Change-or-Die-Scholarly/46962/ I find the discussion a bit surprising. I'm a great promoter of the scholarly potential for new forms of social media--blogs, microblogs, awareness applications, etc. I think some of that potential has been realized, but that there are significant ways in which these venues and tools can be further leveraged. That said, I don't see them as substantially displacing a good list. Am I wrong on this? The question isn't just about AIR-L. It's true, the number of lists I've been a subscriber to peaked in the late 1990s. It's also true that time I might have spent reading a list may now be channeled to reading other kinds of accumulations. But I think lists still have a lot of life in them. That is true of large lists like this one, but also much smaller efforts. Collaborations among distributed scholars still occur *mainly* over email and small email lists, no? Alex PS Please excuse my 1140 character post. -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [X] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //