 |
|
 |
|||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||
Africa Policy E-Journalgiven the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files. However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research. Africa: Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List Date Distributed (ymd): 950702 A NOTE TO OUR READERS June 30, 1995 Most of you receiving this notice have for some time been receiving occasional documents via email, or on an electronic bulletin board or conference, from the Washington Office on Africa (WOA) and the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), as well as documents reposted by either WOA or APIC. For a few this may be the first message you are reading from us. Just as others who are exploring the potential of electronic publishing, we are still learning and experimenting with this new medium. However, with some six months experience so far, almost 700 addresses directly on the list and an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 recipients through bulletin boards and rebroadcasting, it seems time to share with you an explanation of what we are trying to do with this list. We would also like to solicit your comments and suggestions, and ask your help in making the list known to others who might be interested. Below you will find a summary description of our electronic distribution list, its purposes and how we see it as complementing other material available on-line. Your reactions and your suggestions for improvement will be much appreciated. Note: If you did not yourself request to be on our distribution list, you were suggested by someone else as likely to be interested, or you are receiving this on another list or bulletin board or as forwarded by someone else. If you wish to be removed from our list, to receive postings directly rather than through a bulletin board, or to suggest another address to be added, please send an email message with your request to woa@igc.org or apic@igc.org. Please be patient :-). Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List File last updated 6/30/95 *Summary Description*: The Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List is a free electronic distribution list of policy-relevant documents concerning U.S./African relations and related issues. Documents distributed include publications produced by the Washington Office on Africa (WOA) and WOA's educational affiliate, the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), as well as documents selected for reposting by either WOA or APIC. APIC and WOA are each responsible for the content of their own publications. Selection of a document for reposting implies that it is considered a useful resource for wider public debate, but not necessarily that either APIC or WOA endorses all the views expressed in reposted material. The list is designed to supplement, rather than to substitute for, other electronic sources of news, more detailed and frequent material on one particular country or issue focus, or interactive discussion and debate. It will occasionally post pointers to other such resources. And it will also occasionally include notices of availability of relevant printed resources for sale by APIC, WOA or other organizations. *Purposes and Audience*: We want to reach the largest number of individuals and multi-user sites with a concern for Africa policy issues and U.S./African relations. While the primary focus is on material useful to broader constituencies in the U.S., we hope that it may also be of interest to people and sites in other countries. We are aiming to have material which is generally understandable to readers with limited background knowledge but still useful as updates to those with more extensive background. Our objective is to help build a critical mass of information serving constituencies which can press U.S. policy in directions more sensitive to African grassroots interests in peace, sustainable development, democratization and human rights. We have chosen a simple text email format as our primary vehicle for the present in order to reach the largest number of people at the lowest cost to us and to the recipients. If you know of individuals or multi-user sites that would find the material helpful, please provide us with the addresses or pass this notice on to them. We would like to have it reach sites in Africa as well, particularly in order to gain feedback that might in turn help educate U.S. constituencies. But we are aware that many sites as yet have limited bandwidth or high costs for receiving messages. Although the list is not a discussion list, comments and suggestions on the content of our postings and our strategy for electronic distribution are welcomed, and will be taken into consideration. Reposting and reproduction in other forms, with acknowledgement, is welcomed. Notification of reposting is not required but would be much appreciated since it can provide us with a gauge of the extent to which our material is being found useful. *Frequency*: Irregular, ranging from two to three items a month to two to three items a week. Our goal is to pace the distribution so as to include enough material on a range of topics to be useful to the largest number of recipients while not including so much detailed or highly specialized material that recipients' mailboxes are overloaded. Some items, with greater detail concerning U.S. legislative process, are sent only to addresses with U.S.-based host computers. *Semi-technical details*: The list of addresses is maintained off-line in a Pegasus Mail distribution list. Items to be distributed are sent by email to all addresses on the list, which include both individual addresses and sites such as the Peacenet conference africa.news, the listservs Africa-L and Africa-N, the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.africa, and the Ecunet meeting Africa Advocacy. Individuals wanting to join the list, or to have their names dropped, should send a message to woa@igc.org or to apic@igc.org. Sysops of multi-user sites should inform us of the correct name/address of the conference or list name to which they prefer our postings to be sent. Note that it is not practical for us to filter the list by topic for particular recipients. Those wanting to access only selected postings should ask the sysop of their host system whether it is possible to arrange a conference address to receive the list instead of its being sent to their individual address. Although back items are not currently available electronically in an archive from APIC or WOA, they can be accessed on the APC networks in the africa.news conference. Future plans call for making documents distributed through the list also available through gopher and web access. Most are currently available through the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Web site at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/AS.html under the Urgent Actions or What's New links. ********************************************************* The Washington Office on Africa (WOA) is a not-for-profit church, trade union and civil rights group supported organization that works with Congress on Africa-related legislation. For more information on WOA, send any email message to woa-info@igc.org. WOA's educational affiliate is the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and individuals. For more information on APIC, send any email message to apic-info@igc.org.
Documents previously distributed in the e-journal are
available on the Africa Action website: To be added to or dropped from the e-journal subscription list, write to e-journal@africaaction.org. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the source mentioned in the posting.
|
|
Africa Policy E-Journal
