DIRECTORY OF DISCUSSION LISTS FOR HISTORIANS

This revision of 13 November, 1994, is an extensive update of the version of March, 1994. A lesser revision of form and content is anticipated before the end of 1994.

This is a list of Internet special interest lists (also called "forums") broadly related to the study of history. It is over 100 Kb in length, which most people will find too big to download or read through. I suggest two methods to explore it. One is to do a search for a keyword of interest to you. Better is to use the links in the following table of contents to reach the section you want.

I. History Lists
    A. Universal and General History
    B. Lists on the History and Culture of Specific Regions
           1. Asia in general, Central Asia, Pacific and Oceania
           2. East Asia
                a. Korea and Japan
                b. China
                c. Southeast Asia
          3. South Asia
          4. West Asia
          5. Africa
          6. European West
	        a. Europe as a whole; western civ
                 b. Ancient West
                 c. Feudal West (to 17th century)
                 d. East and Central Europe
                 e. Modern Western Europe (focus after 17th c.)
          7. New World
                 a. Americas in general
                 b. Caribbean, Latin America, and South America
                 c. North America

II. Auxilliary and Social Science
     A. Environment
          1. Ecology, energy, non-domestic animals and biophere
          2. Geography, maps and climate
     B. Human Individual, Psychology, Cognitive Development, Play
     C. Society
           1. Bio determinations of society, demography, health, bio-anthro
           2. Determinations of tradition: anthro, arch, ethnog, culture
           3. The arts: music, architecture, literature, and dance
           4. Sociology and social theory
                  a. In general
                  b. religion and ideology
                  c. gender
                  d. communication, linguistics, cross-cultural relations
           5. Economics
                  a. in general, labor
                  b. agriculture, domesticated animals
           6. Political science
                  a. law and normative political relations
                  b. conflict, war and weapons
                  c. simulation and systems modeling

III. Historiography: Research, Writing, and Teaching
      A. Methodology, Dating, Philosophy of History and History per se
      B. Pedagogy, Employment, and Academia
      C. The Text
            1. E-texts; text analysis, transmission and retrieval; hyptertext markup; OCR
            2. Text editing, word processing, electronic and desktop publishing, writing
      	   3. Bibliography and Citation
      D. Information Management
            1. Libraries, info science, museums, and e-text archives
            2. Information retrieval
            3. Databases, statistics, spreadsheets

IV. Computers
      A. Internet Resources and Info Technolgy; Navigating and Browsing
      B. Computer-Mediated Communications: Discussion Lists, E-Mail, Nets, Journals, Cryptography
      C. Software of use to the historian   
            1. Software in general
            2. Operating systems
            3. Communications, browsers, navigators and LAN
            4. Multimedia and graphics
       D. Computers per se
            1. Scholarly use of computers
            2. Hardware

This list is a synthesis and revision of a number of other lists, including Richard Jensen's Useful History Lists, Art McGee's Black and African-American list; a list of history lists ( HISTLIST.BIB) prepared by Lynn Nelson in 1992 and subsequently updated, and a list of auxiliary sciences relevant to history (HISTAUX.LST) written by myself, Haines Brown, in 1993. In order that its usefulness be maintained, please send me (brownh@ccsu.ctstateu.edu) any corrections or additions of which you are aware.

For help using the lists available on Internet, a good place to begin is with Marty Hoag's LISTSOF LISTS (send a GET LISTSOF LISTS command to LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu) and Arno Wouters' NEW-LIST WOUTERS document (send a GET NEW-LIST WOUTERS command to the same LISTSERV). The fullest list of Internet lists is the one maintained at Dartmouth and is approximately a megabyte in size. One can do a crude search for a list topic by sending the command LIST GLOBAL/ to a LISTSERV, where "search term" is the topic you want to search. The list of lists you get back will be useful, but hardly exhaustive.

You subscribe to most lists by sending a SUBSCRIBE command to a computer named LISTSERV, which is located at the node address of the list in which you are interested (the node address is the information following @). To give the command, enter the following words as the first line of your message:

SUBSCRIBE [name of the list] [your full real name]
(Substitute appropriate words in the square brackets)

For example, if I were to subscribe to the Forum Pan-Africa, I would enter my mail utility and send a message to:

LISTSERV@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu

I would skip the "Subj:" line as irrelevant and write as the first line of my message:

SUB AFRICA-L Haines Brown

That is all that is needed, and in most cases entering Ctl-Z will send the command. LISTSERV will automatically understand this message as a command and probably in a minute or two will send you back a confirmation that your name has been added to the roster of the list's subscribers.

Now for some exceptions. Some addresses are Bitnet sites, which, unlike Internet addresses, are identified by only a single word, followed implicitly or explicitly by .BITNET. Although most Internet addresses start with the old Bitnet address as its first term, one is never sure, and so, for the sake of clarity and brevity, I have adopted the following conventions. I put Bitnet addresses or the Bitnet portion of Internet addresses in upper case; and Internet addresses or the Internet portion of an address in lower case. If the Bitnet address is not incorporated into the Internet address, I put the Bitnet address in parenthesis: (bitnet: BITNETADDRESS). If the list to which you wish to subscribe is a BitNet list and you are at an Internet site, your command to a LISTSERV must be relayed through a gateway that connects the two networks, such as cunyvm.cuny.edu or pucc.Princeton.edu. For example, if I wanted to subscribe to the New Social History list, I would send my SUBSCRIBE command to:

LISTSERV%UCBVM.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Note the change from @ after LISTSERV to % when using a gate.

For most lists, you can assume that the computer's name is LISTSERV. If you send a SUBSCRIBE command to a LISTSERV that does not service lists, you will probably get back the message that the user name "listserv" is unknown. There are other software applications for list servers. In this listing, if the computer to which you need to send a command is other than LISTSERV, such as MAILBASE, its name will be put in uppercase letters and located in parenthesis after the list name. If the command to subscribe is other than SUBSCRIBE, such as the JOIN command sent to the MAILBASE server, I will place the command in the same parenthesis. The network in the UK that employs MAILBASE is called JANET, and if you are in the UK, the order of domains in the node address is reversed. If you are in the UK, send a command to mailbase@uk.ac.mailbase, and in the text give a JOIN command. When subscribing to a list served by MAJORDOMO, the SUBSCRIBE command is normally not followed by your name. Not all lists are automatically served by a computer such as LISTSERV, and you join these lists by sending a command to a special mailbox, such as LIST-REQUEST or a personal message to the list's manager ("owner").

There are ethical and legal constraints on the kind of discussion suited to Internet lists. Although these constraints are changing and are debated, should the list manager ("owner") or node administrator believe you have transgressed them, he or she has the right and duty to warn you and if necessary remove you from the list. Some lists are closed to the public. Others have various restrictions or conditions for subscription, which you find out about when you seek to join. Generally, messages sent to a list should be brief, address the topic defined in the subject line (the discussion "thread"), and fall within the general scope of the List's self-characterization. When you introduce a new thread of discussion, create a subject title that clearly characterizes it. Also, of course, never engage in ad hominem attack, personal abuse, or employ crude language, for doing so betrays the purpose of Internet and the public trust. People of most cultures, when exposed to crude language, experience it as personal abuse. Finally, it is a good idea to put your name and user ID at the end of each message you send.

The quality of the discussion on a list and therefore its benefit depends on the initiative and contributions of its subscribers. Do not feel intimidated because you are "only" a student or because you are an interloper from some other field of work or expertise.

Some lists redistribute mail or files from other lists, such as UseNet special interest groups, and I indicate this by the term "distribution." I do not attempt to include Usenet groups in this list, although some are of interest to historians. "Peered" lists represent lists that share the same traffic to reduce the burden on each. Generally you can assume that a duplicated list name refers to peered list, but not all peers have exactly the same name. Try to subscsribe to a peered list through the node which is closest to you. A "moderated" list has submissions screened, edited or organized by the list's "owner." "Journal" refers to an electronic journal, which, like some "News" lists, tends to distribute information periodically to a list of subscribers rather than support a dialogue among them.

I have put comments in square brackets. Although list evaluations would be helpful, I have not tried to include them because both the volume of traffic on a list and the character of its discussion fluctuate; any characterizations would rapidly become obsolete. Some lists are quiet for a week or two and then spring to life; other lists have such heavy traffic that it takes a considerable effort just to get through one's daily mail.

I have usually tried to verify the existence of the lists and to look more closely at those of uncertain status. If the status of a list remains doubtful, I place a question mark in brackets after its name. Undoubtedly some marked in this way will prove to be functional after all, and I would appreciate any reports on success and failure. The user should understand that trying to achieve a high degree of accuracy in a list such as this would be very difficult.

The list begins with history, including political or cultural regions that are to some extent the product of history. Following this are lists that are auxiliary to historical study. Next comes a section of lists that loosely fall under the category historiography, and this section is followed by one on computers. I have adopted categories only for the sake of simplicity, not because they are defensible in principle. Please accept my apologies if the classification employed here or the exclusion of your favorite list disturbs you.

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS RECOMMENDED BY ARACHNET
FOR INCLUSION WITH ALL LISTS OF LISTS
        This document is an informal collection of "hints" which may help 
   you find e-mail lists on specific topics. If you have an announce-
   ment you would like to distribute, PLEASE send it ONLY to the one or 
   two lists whose subscribers would be most interested. At no time 
   should mail be sent to many lists or "all lists". Such "junk mail" caus-
   es many duplications and network congestion and is a violation of the
   spirit of most network usage agreements. If you are in doubt about
   this policy please check it out with your system administrators
   before sending mail to a list [in other words, please don't use the
   information contained in this file to do saturation mailings].

Those interested in world history might like to explore the World History World Wide Web Home Page or read issues of AfricaUpdate, the newsletter of the African Studies Program at Central Connecticut State University.

I. HISTORY LISTS (including cultural and political regions)

A. Universal and General History

B. Lists on the History and Culture of Specific Regions (proceeding West from the Pacific)

1. Asia in General, Central Asia, Pacific, and Oceania
2. East Asia
a. Korea and Japan
b. China
c. Southeast Asia
3. South Asia
4. West Asia
5. Africa
6. Europe
a. Europe as a Whole; Western Civilization
b. Ancient West
c. Feudal (to 17 th century)
d. East and Central Europe
e. Modern Western Europe (focus after 17th century)
7. New World
a. Americas in general
b. Caribbean, Latin America, and South America
c. North America

II. Auxilliary and Social Sciences

A. Environment

1. Ecology, Energy, Biosphere, and non-domesticated Animals
2. Geography, maps, and climate

B. The Human Individual, Psychology, Cognitive Development, and Behavior

C. Society

1. Biological determinations of society, demography, genaeology, health, bio-anthropology
2. Determination of tradition: anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, culture.
3. The arts: music, architecture, literature, and dance
4. Sociology and social theory
a. In general, demography, social class, social theory
b. Religion and ideology
c. Gender
d. Communications. linguistics, language, and cross-cultural influences
5. Economics, labor, and technology
a. In general; economic development
b. Agriculture, pastoralism and domesticated animals
6. Political science
a. Law and normative political relations; globalism
b. Conflict, War and Weapons
c. Simulation and systems modeling, AI

III. Historiography: Research, Writing and Teaching

A. Methodology, Dating, Philosphy of History and History per se

B. Pedagogy, Employment, Working Conditions, and Academia

C. The Text

1. E-Texts; Text Analysis, Transmission, and Retrieval; Hypertext Markup; and OCR
2. Text editing, word processing, electronic and desktop publishing and writing.
3. Bibliography and citation

D. Information management

1. Libraries, info science, museums and e-text archives
2. Information retrieval
3. Database, statistics, and spreadsheet

IV. Computers

A. Internet Resources and Info Technology; Navigating and Browsing

B. Computer-Mediated Communication: Discussion Lists, E-Mail, Nets, Journals, Crytography

C. Software of use to the historian

1. Software in general
2. Operating systems
3. Communications, browsers, navigators, and LAN
4. Multimedia and graphics

D. Computers per se

1. Scholarly use of computers
2. Hardware