ankgoel@watmsg.waterloo.edu (anil k goel) (05/03/91)
In order to reduce operating costs and paper wastage, the GSA is making
arrangements to deliver its newsletter, The Latest, electronically to as
many members as possible. There are, however, a few logistical problems
involved in implementing this idea. The main problem is stopping the hard
copy being mailed to those who can and want to receive an electronic copy.
I have had extensive discussions with grad students (electronically and
otherwise), the University Graduate Office, and Data Processing from whom
we obtain the labels used for mailing the hard copies of The Latest.
These discussions have centred around the issue of selectively stopping
the mailing of hard copies without involving excessive administrative work
yet, at the same time, providing enough flexibility so that each graduate
student is allowed to make an individual choice as to whether or not to
receive a hard copy of The Latest.
Based on these discussions, the following proposal seems to be a
reasonable solution to adopt and I have taken steps to initiate its
implementation. Note, however, that its success depends entirely upon
individual graduate students. Each of us able to read The Latest
electronically, must take steps to stop the hard copy being mailed out. The
following procedure includes easy-to-follow instructions for achieving
this.
The Proposal:
Starting now, the last page of each issue of The Latest will comprise a
form on which to request the Editor to discontinue mailing the hard copy.
Any graduate student not interested in receiving the hard copy should fill
out the information on this form, rip off the last page, fold it, and drop
it in the outgoing on-campus mail bin.
We will maintain an ongoing database, on the GSA computer, of all
graduate students who have mailed this information to us. When ordering
subsequent sets of labels, we will pass this file to the Graduate Office
and they, in turn, will request Data Processing to produce a set of mailing
labels for all graduate students except those appearing on our database.
As for reading The Latest electronically, each i1ssue will be posted in
its entirety to the electronic newsgroup uw.gsa as a collection of
articles.
For those intereste1d, a few hard copies of The Latest will always be
available in the Grad House.
- Anil Goel
Editor, The Latest