U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: New home for list needed.

Re: New home for list needed.



Greg,

Beware, long and wordy.

Questions for you:

You are at Columbia in Chicago?

How do you archive/download the whole list?

If downloading the whole list, how much space might it occupy? 2 gigs or 50 or what??

Anyone thought of approaching George Eastman House about this or is this small change for them?

What year did the list start?

So you have the very first files of the list and are they still lost from the archives online and only you have them?  If so are they uploadable to the new list location?

I think I have made almost all my alt friends (and maybe an enemy too! :)) on this alt list. I would be lost without it.  This weekend in Seattle, for instance, I got to spend a far-too-short afternoon with Ron Reeder, seeing his gorgeous platinum and gum work and talking diginegs.  I've been to Clay's house to see his work and setup and meet all the alt friends in Houston.  To Judy's house in NY. To Terry Lindquist's house in AL.  To APIS in NM.  Met Sam Wang at APIS.  Mark Nelson thru Sam Wang.  Jim Noel and the group in CA.  I could go on and on but the point is the incredible networking of a list that goes right into my mailbox, unlike Facebook which someone dragged me onto and I just do NOT get on the web much.  I don't need to find out that someone had a bad day walking their dog, for instance.  But all of these people I would not know except they're on the list.

 My next desire is to meet all the Italian altees, if my university would see the benefit...And I can't believe how active it seems alt is in Australia--how would we ever know that without the list! I put my husband onto it to see if Christmas there is in order.  He's so good about coming along with to these alt things as long as there is exotic travel involved.  Alt in Burma perhaps?

Even an occasional flame was exciting!  I finally had to stop telling my husband, "Guess what happened today on the alt list!!" as his eyes would glaze over.  Iron certainly sharpens iron.

Bringing it back to gum (and history) considering I have spent the last 11 years archiving my 40,000 family of origin photographs, photographs from the 1920's-70's  (culled to 2500, all now being scanned professionally, 100 of which will ultimately result in tricolor gums but all 2500 scans will be distributed to the original 8 children as well as some of them to a historical society in North Central MN) and now I am beginning on the last 3000 imagesetter negatives from the history of north central MN  (those will be made into gums as well for an historical show as they are from 1800's--not family stuff) I realize the importance of preserving the past. Someone has to do it. I understand the labor of love Malin puts in to the alternative photography website, many times a thankless task. People have no idea of the actual hours spent on preserving the past.  

I mean, wouldn't it be cool if there was an archive of a paragraph bio of each and every alt listee? So you could google this archive for gum and come up with a list of those who made gum their process of choice???

Oh gol, not another historical project, hold me back. 

Chris

Christina Z. Anderson

On Nov 11, 2009, at 7:27 AM, Greg Schmitz wrote:

BTW, garbing the archives is not that big a deal - and anybody with even a modicum of drive space (by todays standards) can do it provided they have the bandwidth and the time.  That said, I have, I think a complete archive of the list in a folder I call alt-photo which is nothing but saved messages.   Some of the very early archives came from me when Steve Avery had problems with the listserve and lost the posts - and yeh, I still have the .zip files.
--greg


Greg Schmitz wrote:
Yes, but... Even with commercial hosts like Google and Yahoo somebody has to moderate - that is the nature of the beast.  Short of going to a web based "chat" format, which I think would destroy the list, we are stuck with that reality.  I think things are in the works and I have my fingers crossed.
Best --greg

Tomas Sobota wrote:
Greg,
I also understand (and up to a point share) your concern about longevity. But in that case we need a willing institution and a willing postmaster to manage the list. Do we have them right now?
Also, please notice that for the last two universities that managed the list, we have been just a barely tolerated parasite on their mail managers. When the person in charge (Gordon, Avery) had to go, the list also had to go. Does it have to be that way always?
I think that we have a short term task, and a medium term task on hand. The short term is to save the list archives now in the U. of Sask., store them in one of the servers that have been kindly offered and assure the continuity of the list for the time being.
The medium term task is of course to find a more permanent site.
Tom


On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Greg Schmitz <gws1@columbia.edu <mailto:gws1@columbia.edu>> wrote:

   Tom,  I understand your concern, but the institution that hosted
   this website for the last 10 or so years did so for free and Gord
   did the heavy lifting.  Academic institutions are not perfect, but
   at least to my experience they have a longevity on The Internet
   that exceeds private and individual concerns.  Based on
   experience, and there are a couple of folks on this list that know
   about private concerns that go *poof* I' think the list would be
   better served with an institutional address.

   --greg