BKMNMLLS.RVW   980424

"Managing Mailing Lists", Alan Schwartz, 1998, 1-56592-259-X,
U$29.95/C$42.95
%A   Alan Schwartz
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   1998
%G   1-56592-259-X
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$29.95/C$42.95 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
%P   298 p.
%T   "Managing Mailing Lists"

This book addresses both aspects of mailing list management: the care
and feeding of the list itself, and administration of the software. 
However, it is really the software use and configuration that gets not
only most of the space, but also the largest portion of consideration
and material in the text.  (I also have one absolutely trivial peeve
with the book.  Schwartz abbreviates mailing list management programs
as MLM, and, having lived through the spam wars with their relentless
promotion of "Multi-Level Marketing" that acronym just bugs the heck
out of me.  It seems particularly inappropriate given the subject
matter.)

Chapter one provides a brief background explanation of email itself,
and the basic mailing list functions.  Creation and management of a
list is introduced in chapter two, discussing list policies,
mechanics, moderation, formats, mirroring to Usenet news, and choice
of list software.  The fundamental list creation and maintenance tasks
are presented for Listproc, Majordomo, SmartList, and LISTSERV Lite in
chapters three through six respectively.  The use of sendmail for
mailing list management is covered in chapter seven.  Common mailing
list problems, and brief solutions, are given in chapter eight.

System installation, configuration, and administration of the
Listproc, Majordomo, SmartList, and LISTSERV Lite packages are covered
extensively in chapters nine to twelve.  This section, in fact, takes
up pretty much a third of the book.  Four appendices list both user
and owner/administrator commands in references that expand this
material to fully half of the total pages in the book.

The technical, or program, management side of the text is very good. 
Concepts are presented clearly, and the necessary commands are
included and explained.  The social side of the equation, though, is
not up to the same standard.  The exegesis furnished does illustrate
the usual types of mailing list activities, the needs for structures,
and the reasons for various types of formats.  The troubleshooting
chapter will be helpful and useful to those setting out on the
venture.  But the material does not have a great deal of depth, and
the people problems of mailing lists are more complex than the
technical issues.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998   BKMNMLLS.RVW   980424