I would suggest that the litigation potential weighs heavily on SAA, as
does the "ownership" aspect of the Listserve. For those of you unaware
of past history, the A&A Listserve is now "owned" by SAA. While they
maintain it as a public service for non-members as well as members, SAA
now maintains that Listserve and has more say about content and
membership today. There was quite a bit of question about ownership of
prior posts and whether or not SAA could even exert ownership rights on
them (welcome to the wonderful world of the Internet).

I agree with some of the sentiment of A&A members that a broad span of
early Internet communications history in their profession is going out
the window. You can argue the "knowledge base" loss as well, but I
think they also looked at some academic studies of A&A that indicated
that most of what was there was anecdotal, and thus really of minimal
value. My sense is that some insight into the development of an online
community will be lost, as will something of a historical snapshot of
the profession's evolution during the growth of the Internet. If
anything, that is the real loss -- not being able to see how archivists
and institutions began to come to grips with electronic records and new
types of media. Again, purely anecdotal, but still an interesting
snapshot.

I guess I would suggest that this is a loss. However, I fully
understand SAA's position. It is something that they did not arrive at
lightly and I imagine that many of their Council members had some
sleepless nights weighing the appraisal aspects against the rather
tenuous legal position that SAA was in.

One of the challenges of Listserves is the ownership aspect. We here
have been fortunate to continue to have support from educational
institutions who host RECMGMT-L. But it would not surprise me if we see
these sorts of Listserves go away as educational institutions look to
cut the costs associated with non-core services and reduce IT
expenditures. For a number of years, we have been very deliberate in
maintaining distance between RECMGMT-L and ARMA, even though we often
have ARMA-related discussions and some people think that this is the
"ARMA Listserv". It is not and will not be, so long as RECMGMT-L has a
home elsewhere. When and if RECMGMT-L becomes homeless, I can be
reasonably certain that the list owners will make every effort to find
a neutral home for the List. Only if RECMGMT-L cannot find a home, will
they consider talking to ARMA. And frankly, that will be somewhat messy
and likely require some changes to how the List is administered.



Patrick Cunningham, CRM
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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