Archive
Library Web Newsletter Archive, 2007–2011
A mailing-list archive of 232 Library Web newsletters survives from February 2007 to November 2011. What it contains, month by month, and what it proves.
5 min read
Between February 2007 and November 2011, a mailing list called Libraryweb sent out a weekly newsletter of library and publishing news. Its archive survives, in public, at lists.ibiblio.org: 232 messages across 55 months. It is the largest verifiable trace of the earlier life of this domain, and it is not held by us.
This page is an index into it. Each month below links to that month in the original archive. We do not republish the messages, and we do not claim more from them than they show.
What the archive actually is
A Sympa mailing-list archive, organised by month, message by message, with subject lines, dates and senders. Almost every message after the first weeks carries the same subject: “[Libraryweb] Newsletter”. They arrive roughly weekly, four or five to a month, nearly always from the same sender.
The first weeks are different and worth noting, because they are the only part that is obviously not editorial. February 2007 opens with test messages, sent while the list was being set up, before the weekly summary begins. It is the sort of thing an archive keeps and a history would tidy away.
What the newsletters covered
Each issue is a digest: a set of short items linking to library and publishing news from the previous week, grouped loosely by subject.
Taking one issue as an example, the newsletter of 3 June 2009 covers public library funding and new buildings, a virtual reference service, libraries starting to use Twitter and Facebook, a European inquiry into Google Book Search, public lending right, several book reviews, e-book readers including the Sony Reader and the Kindle, print-on-demand machines, and a run of professional journals and conferences.
That mixture is representative of the period rather than unusual. Read across the years, the recurring subjects are the ones the profession was arguing about at the time: e-books and the first generation of dedicated readers, mass digitization and the legal questions around it, shared cataloguing and union catalogues, Library 2.0 and the arrival of social tools, mobile and virtual services, funding, and reading itself.
Several of those threads are subjects this site still writes about, which is the reason the index is worth keeping. Library 2.0 and A History of Ebooks in Libraries take up two of them directly, and WorldCat and Union Catalogues a third.
The index, year by year
Every month held in the archive, linked to the original. Message counts are the archive’s own.
2007
The list opens in February 2007 with a handful of setup and test messages, then settles into a weekly summary. Eleven months survive, 54 messages in all.
February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December
2008
A complete year: twelve months, 50 messages, the weekly rhythm unbroken. This is also the year the magazine on this domain began publishing.
January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December
2009
Twelve months and 49 messages. The issues from this year are the fullest, and the ones that best show what the list was for.
January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December
2010
Nine months and 38 messages. Nothing survives for July, August or September; whether the list paused or the captures are simply missing is not recorded.
January · February · March · April · May · June · October · November · December
2011
Eleven months and 41 messages, thinning towards the end. The last message in the archive is dated 2 November 2011.
January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November
What this evidence supports, and what it does not
The archive is good evidence of a narrow thing. It shows that a Library Web mailing list existed, that it sent a weekly newsletter, and that it did so from February 2007 until November 2011 with a gap in the middle of 2010. That is a statement about a mailing list.
It is not a statement about the website. Whether libraryweb.info was publishing continuously across the same span is a separate question, resting on separate evidence, and the two are easy to merge into a claim neither supports. The distinction is drawn on Library Web Archive — Library Culture on the Web, 2008–2010, which sets out what is known about the site itself.
Nor does the archive tell us who read it. A mailing-list archive records what was sent, not how many people received it, and no subscriber figures survive. Anyone quoting a readership number for this list is inventing it.
How to read it now
Two things make the archive more interesting than a list of old links.
The first is that it is a weekly record of a profession working something out in real time. The questions in a 2008 issue — whether e-books would displace lending, whether libraries should be on social platforms at all, what to do about a search engine digitising the collection — are asked without knowing how they turned out. Some were answered, several turned out to be the wrong questions, and a few are still open. Digital Library and The Modern Library are where this site takes up what became of them.
The second is that most of the outbound links in those issues are dead. A newsletter of links is a measurement of link rot, taken weekly, over five years, which is a subject this site writes about and an unusually clean example of it.
Sources
The archive itself: lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/libraryweb, hosted by ibiblio at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Message counts, dates and the range given on this page are read from that archive and can be checked against it.
The article directory of the magazine is kept at its original address, /articledir.php, for the same reason this index exists.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the newsletter archive hosted on this site?
- No. The messages are held in a public mailing-list archive at ibiblio.org, which is where they have always been. This page is an index into it, with the context the archive itself does not supply. We link to each month rather than republishing the messages.
- Does the archive prove the website was running from 2007 to 2011?
- No, and the two should not be merged. What it shows is that a Library Web mailing list sent newsletters across those years. What the website published, and when, is a separate question answered by separate evidence, and the current account of it is on the archive page.
- Why do three months of 2010 have nothing in them?
- The archive holds no messages for July, August or September 2010, and gives no reason. A pause in sending and a gap in the captured record look identical from the outside, so we record the gap and do not explain it.
Related Library Web topics
The subjects the earlier Library Web wrote about, as this site covers them now.
- The Value of Public Libraries: What the Evidence Shows
Public libraries are judged on more than loans: literacy, digital access, employment, community and trust. What the evidence supports, and what it cannot.
- Bibliotherapy: How Reading and Libraries Can Support Wellbeing
Bibliotherapy covers three quite different practices. What libraries actually run, what the research supports, and what reading-based support cannot do.
- Library 2.0: What the Term Meant and What Survived
Library 2.0 was the argument that libraries should be built around participation rather than announcement. What it proposed, what failed, and what stayed.
- A History of Ebooks in Libraries
From the first e-readers to licensing, DRM and the two-week loan of a file: how library ebook lending was built, and why it works the way it does.
- WorldCat and Union Catalogues
A union catalogue lets one search cover many libraries at once. How shared cataloguing works, what WorldCat is, and why libraries describe a book once.
- Social Media and Libraries
Libraries were early to social platforms and are now rebuilding their own channels. What worked, what the platforms took back, and what belongs on a feed.
- Digital and Media Literacy in Public Libraries
Public libraries teach the skills the internet assumes people already have: accounts, forms, devices, and judging what you are reading. How that work runs.