[Isis-users] IsisList usability access proposal - email Subject Line

Mon Oct 29 14:15:36 CET 2012

Dear all

After following Isis list since 2008 collecting/browsing through hundreds items in the past, I propose some 
ideas for
submissions to the list to ease participation and initiate a process to optimize the usage/usability for all.

Since the community of this list possibly represents mostly librarians and documentalists it may be 
appropriate if the knowledge on structuring to ease access to information collections would also be applied to 
the list itself by a few rules and simple controlled vocabulary to speed up the recognition of relevance for 
every participant.

Additionally this simple effort could ease the development of the software itself for the developers thus 
contributing to the satisfaction of all. Put short: Help participants quickly detect a messages subject - if 
it is relevant to be read, if advice can be offered,  should be kept, followed or filtered.

Proposed method:

1) The subject line of emails sended to the list should be actively used, edited by every sender and 
recognized as a keyword field for the data-base of isis discussion list messages

1.a) By using a few rules (keywords and order) the subject line of messages can become a powerful tool to 
quickly detect the relevance of a message to the recipients. Keeping a certain order of keywords in the 
subject line would facilitate quickly structuring the content of the list using the alphabetical order 
function in the used email-software producing a subject related structure.

some examples / par esempio:

Question winisis installation win7 novice -> leads to: Answer winisis installation win7 administrator
News J-isis Linux webserver betaversion developer
Question ABCD loan winXP client book bug? advanced -> leads to Answer ABCD loan winXP client book bug? trainer

1.b) Bridging the language gap: I suppose that 99% of participants have some knowledge in english: adding 
english keywords to the subject line would help people to get at least an idea if the issue is of relevancy to 
them. Otherwise we keep a language divide to the disadvantage of all.

Those not aware of a language cannot give advice nor can they learn.
How to resolve the principal problem of pure messages in a language one does not know / I have no idea.
English keywords at least would help to recognize an issue of interest.

1.c) Participants offering courses, seminars, services in their countrys should clearly indicate this e.g.
Event Isisall onlin/webinar payment 2012 November 20
Event WinIsis advanced Peru Lima December 2012 free
Event Isis annual meeting location date: program | documents | announcement |

2) Answers or comments should always include the quoted questions and repeat the keywords in the subject line 
and adding "answer | comment": This would lower the load of everyones mailbox by ~50% and ease the 
retrospective finding of items of interest.

There are repeated questions to source information, downloads, documentation etc. indicating a need of 
improvement in usability of the list and the resources offered. Though the new wiki interface under 
http://trac.reddes.bvsalud.org/projects/abcd/wiki/AboutABCD is a promising step this offer should be broadened 
further to the many information resources of Isis software available. This is especially important for Isis 
discussion list as it is recommended as first line information platform to questions.

I hope to stimulate awareness for enhancing usability and access to Isis discussion list and Isis resources 
among the community.

Thank You
Kind regards
Constantin Cazan

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Mag.Dr.Constantin Cazan
medio.at - Medical & Pharmaceutical Information Office e.U.
http://www.medio.at, mailto:office at medio.at
Wien - Österreich
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