MLA-L The Music Library Association Mailing List Indiana University hosts MLA-L, a mail distribution service for the Music Library Association. MLA-L uses the LISTSERV program familiar to subscribers to similar lists such as PACS-L or BI-L. The services provided by MLA-L include mail distribution, mail archiving, and file/document serving. A. Mail Distribution The address for mail distribution is mla-l@listserv.indiana.edu. There are several ways to subscribe to MLA-L: 1. Send a mail message to listserv@listserv.indiana.edu consisting of one line: SUBSCRIBE MLA-L 2. Write to the listowners (owner-mla-l@listserv.indiana.edu) with a request to be added. Subscription to the list is at no charge beyond your usual e-mail costs. Please note that any message sent to MLA-L will be distributed to all "subscribers." We intend that the list be used for various activities of MLA that can benefit by wide-scale distribution (such as announcements of deadlines for Notes and the Newsletter, news items, general inquiries about MLA activities, etc.). The list should also be used for reference inquiries and other topics of interest to the music library community. Since every mail message will be distributed to all subscribers, care should be exercised when sending mail to the MLA-L. Refrain from sending messages of interest to only a known small group (such as committee business) or messages intended for only one other individual. On many systems, if you REPLY to a mail message that has been distributed via a distribution list, your REPLY message will also be distributed to all participants. In many cases you will want to REPLY only to the original sender; you should therefore not use the REPLY command, but send a mail message addressed to the original sender. (For users of CMS MAIL/MAILBOOK you can use the special command REPLY FROM instead of the function key REPLY.) B. Mail Archiving Correspondence distributed through MLA-L is archived in weekly logs. These are identified by the filename/filetype in the form MLA-L LOGYRMOW, where YR is the last two digits of the year, MO is the month, and W is a letter representing the week of the month (A through D or E). Any of these logs can be retrieved by sending a command similar to the following to listserv@listserv.indiana.edu: GET MLA-L LOG9503A This example would retrieve the archive for the first week of March 1995. An alternative way to query the MLA-L correspondence logs is to search via the WWW interface: http://listserv.indiana.edu/archives/mla-l.html On can also utilize the LISTSERV database utility interactively or via mail message inquiries. The utility enables sophisticated database inquiries. Instructions can be obtained by sending the command INFO DATABASE F=MAIL to listserv@listserv.indiana.edu (or to your closest LISTSERV). C. File (Document) Serving MLA-L also functions as a server for documents of interest to music librarians and members of the Music Library Association. To to obtain a listing of available files, send the command INDEX MLA-L to listserv@listserv.indiana.edu (not to MLA-L). Once you know the filename and filetype of the document you wish to receive, send the command GET to listserv@listserv.indiana.edu (replacing with the actual names found in the index--for example, ADMIN STRUCT). You can obtain more information about the operation of the MLA Clearinghouse by sending the command GET CLEARING HOUSE to listserv@listserv.indiana.edu. Many of these files are also available through the World Wide Web server at Indiana University. Point your Web client to http://www.music.indiana.edu/tech_s/mla/index.htm Please feel free to contact us should you have any difficulties or questions. Also, we would appreciate receiving any suggestions about this introduction to MLA-L (omissions, errors, etc.). A. Ralph Papakhian (papakhi@indiana.edu) Richard Griscom (rwgris01@homer.louisville.edu) Co-owners, MLA-L