Facilitating faculty communications using an electronic bulletin board to store and organize listserv messages.

The Center for Academic Informatics of the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University uses BULLETIN, a public-domain bulletin board system for VMS, to facilitate communication between our faculty and staff and their colleagues at other institutions. In conjunction with the VAX electronic mail program, BULLETIN can store and organize messages from Internet listserv mailing lists. The software allows us to set up individual folders within BULLETIN for each list of interest to our users. This means that they do not have to sift through "lists of lists" in order to find the ones that coincide with their interests. Another significant advantage is that users' electronic mailboxes do not become cluttered with postings from a variety of lists, interfering with their ability to read and respond to their "real" electronic mail. Yet they can still post to lists, and the posting will be sent from their user name and electronic address. BULLETIN also offers a natural structure for setting up interest groups where local users can post announcements, questions, and answers.