Newsgroups: comp.archives Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: [newusers] Re: Government Information Message-ID: <1991Mar13.080023.14811@ox.com> Followup-To: news.newusers.questions Sender: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) Reply-To: emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti) Organization: OTA Limited Partnership, Ann Arbor MI. References: <1991Mar11.154419.179@biivax.dp.beckman.com> Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1991 08:00:23 GMT Approved: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) X-Original-Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Archive-name: mail/guides/interest-groups/1991-03-11 Archive: ftp.nisc.sri.com:/netinfo/interest-groups [192.33.33.53] Original-posting-by: emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti) Original-subject: Re: Government Information Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) In article <1991Mar11.154419.179@biivax.dp.beckman.com> rlmeyering@biivax.dp.beckman.com writes: What newsgroup is used for inquiries about government information. For example, I want an electronic copy of the congressional register. Where would I post this request and other requests similiar in nature? Best group I know of for this purpose would be GOVDOC-L, a mailing list. Information on how to join it should be in one of the lists of mailing lists; in this particular case it's a BITNET list, but in general you wouldn't know that before you started to look. (how do I know this you ask? I used to read govdoc-l every so often.) There is a list traditionally called the "Arpanet List of Lists" kept on ftp.nisc.sri.com:/netinfo/interest-groups which has nice, well-formatted descriptions of how to subscribe to all sorts of differnet lists. It's big (500K), there are a lot of people talking out there. There's a mailing list associated with it, join it by sending mail to interest-groups-request@nisc.sri.com; if you have started a list that you want others to know about, again send mail there. There is a mail server that goes along with this site; the address is "mail-server@nisc.sri.com". Ideally they would have some sort of way of mailing you the nice entry about just one list, but I really don't know. (looks like they don't have a way, though I can think of one...) Beware that any half a megabyte list will have some errors in it! Within this list you will find: GovDoc-L%PSUVM.BITNET@VM1.NODAK.EDU Mailing list with a focus is specifically on issues of information dissemination through Federal Depository Libraries. Issues to be discussed include: electronic dissemination policies of the Government Printing Office(GPO), the 1990 Census, access to Federal documents (Freedom of Information Act issues), automation of document collections in libraries (Marcive v. OCLC tapes; database consideration; retrospective conversion; etc.), document end user education and legislation related to depository libraries. United Nations, State and Foreign Government documents can be included for discussion. The list is moderated but uncensored. It is edited with the intention of producing a digest at the end of the year. BitNet users may subscribe by sending the following command via mail or an interactive message to LISTSERV@PSUVM: SUB GovDoc-L Your full name where "Your full name" is your real name, not your login Id. Non-BitNet users can join the list be sending the above command as the only line in the text/body of a message to LISTSERV%PSUVM.BITNET@VM1.NODAK.EDU. Coordinators: Diane Kovacs Michael J. Kovacs This may or may not meet your requirements. Some BITNET lists are gatewayed into the "bit.listserv.*" distribution, that is to say if your site has it you may be able to dispense with this "SUB GovDoc-L My Name" routine and just join "bit.listserv.govdoc-l". You can have a list of all of the BITNET lists send to you by sending a listserv the command "LIST GLOBAL". it's about 165K from psuvm.psu.edu; your mailer may have restrictions on how big a message can be blorted at it in one chunk. Grepping through this list for "government" yields GOVDOC-L GOVDOC-L@PSUVM (Peered) Discussion of Government Document I I don't see any way to do that search on the remote side so that the whole file doesn't have to be sent. Sending a "review govdoc-l" to see if this is the list you want yields a big long list of everyone who has subscribed, a few redistribution points on the BITNET, and perhaps some indication of who is in charge. The charter (as seen in list-of-lists) doesn't seem to be available tho. There's no indication anywhere that I can see where to get past issues of GOVDOC-L; I'd launch a message at one of the coordinators to see what came back. What would be really handy would be a way to remotely do searches through the vast morass of mailing lists and newsgroups and extract key words from their group description, charter, or frequently asked questions list. -- Msen Edward Vielmetti /|--- moderator, comp.archives emv@msen.com