EJournal: An Account of the First Two Years

Date

1991

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

The Public-Access Computer Systems Review

Abstract

As I write these first paragraphs of EJournal's autobiography, it is the morning after the first issue hit the "newsstands." Yesterday, I uploaded the mailing list to the list server from my personal account on SUNY Albany's VAX. Then I finished the unexpected task of deleting 283 copies of the subscription confirmation message that was sent to recipients. Ready at last, I e-mailed the fourth "final" version of the 421-line issue to the list server for network distribution. Then came the catch: I was not privileged to send anything to the list from that account. So, it wasn't until I had gone through one more file transfer and the deletion of a "wrong-address" header that EJournal 1.1 went off into the "matrix." Yesterday's episode is typical of the last two years: one adjustment of expectations after another. This essay will fill in some of the twists and turns along EJournal's short journey. It will be a kind of editorial autobiography, and I will finish up with a rationalized interpretation of the response to the midMarch 1991 mailing. Near the top of EJournal's front page is the line: "An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications of electronic networks and texts." My interest in paperless texts goes back to an experimental course in 1985. In it, we almost abandoned the classroom in favor of writing to each other from terminals. My awareness of larger networks began when Frank Madden, of SUNY's Westchester Community College, introduced me to an Exxonsponsored project out of New York Institute of Technology. Michael Spitzer had convinced several people interested in using computers to help students figure out how to write more confidently. In the spring of 1989, after Michael's funding had dried up and Fred Kemp started MegaByte University (MBU) on BITNET, several intriguing issues began to pop up with some frequency. Let's turn the clock back, then, to Spring 1989.

Description

Keywords

Citation

Jennings, Edward M. "EJournal: An Account of the First Two Years." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 91-110.