Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 10:49:33 -0500

From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU

Subject: Good Idea (in spite of bad timing)



Somebody at U of Alabama Press just sent me information about Ellen

Johnson's new book, saying that Allan had suggested that I might want

to put the information on the ADS web pages. I think having a page

with links to information about new books by ADS members is an excellent

idea. So I just created such a page, with one entry so far -- the one

I just got.



I stuck a note on the page saying that it was new and that I wouldn't

be able to add anything to it until late July but that almost certainly

there would be many additions at that point. If any of you have recent

books, I'd like to add them -- at the end of July. There's no way I

can do it right now. I'm in the midst of grading summer school exams

and am leaving town tomorrow.



If you want the descriptions to look "prettier," send them to me as

html documents. Otherwise, just send them in ASCII and I'll pre them --

i.e., I'll stick pre at the beginning of the document and /pre at the

end, meaning that it will appear on the web in exactly the form you sent

it in (same paragraphing etc.)



Another problem with good ideas for web additions is that the fate of

our web pages (temporary fate -- one year) is uncertain at the moment.

I'll be leaving late next April to teach in Japan until May '98. Because

telnet access from there will too slow to edit web pages conveniently

back here and will be costing by the minute, I won't be able to keep

the pages up to date. Since I'm the only ADS member here at MSU, there's

nobody here who can take over the task. And since outsiders can't have

accounts on our system, nobody else can do it. So it's going to come down

to either finding a new home for the web pages or not updating them for

a year. (In the latter case, I'd put an explanatory note on every page.)

But that's all still pretty far in the future. Right now I'm concentrating

on getting out of town tomorrow.



Btw -- you may remember that before I left town for a little over a week

last month, I said that I was changing ADS-L back to "send=public" and

hoping the spammers were on vacation. I still haven't changed it back

to "send=private." Let's hope they stay on vacation for the rest of

the summer.

--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)



P.S. Back to the subject of new-book blurbs. In case any of you are

wondering how new is new, how recent is recent, I don't know. What do

y'all think? Published within the past year?