LM_Net needs your support
Monday, February 14, 2011 at 05:18PM 
LM_Net was my first (and only) PLN for many, many years. So my ears perked up when I read this plea...
The recent financial recession has taken its toll on the LM_NET general operating fund. Although your LM_NET membership is free, there are monthly operating expenses for servers and part-time list managers. We need to meet these expenses to offer LM_NET service to you.
This is our first fund drive appeal to all LM_NETters. We have a strong community of LM_NET users and hope to have 100% participation in this call to action. If every LM_NET member could contribute $1 we would have enough funds to cover operating expenses for the whole year! We encourage you to donate $1 minimum.
To donate to "What is LM_NET Worth to You?" please click this TinyURL which will take you to the Paypal site: http://tinyurl.com/4o7gj2g
or
If you would prefer NOT to use PayPal for your LM_NET contribution, try this alternative.
Check Payable to: Bennett, Walker and Wurster
Memo: For LM_NET
Mail to:
Sue Wurster/ LM_NET
729 Finnegan Rd
Potsdam, NY 13676
Blue Skunk readers who are also LM_Net subscribers, what else do you have to spend you moldy old money on? I am giving $100 - $1 for me, and $1 for 99 of you who are dead beats.
Here's my little ode to LM_Net:
Continuing Education
Head for the Edge, Library Media Connection, September 2008
You Know You’re a Librarian in 2008 when…you know more librarians in Texas than you do in your home state because of LM_Net.
Peter Milbury and Mike Eisenberg, the founders and moderators par excellence of LM_Net for the past 15 years, announced last November that they are passing the torch.
For the one or two of you reading this who don’t know about LM_Net, it has been the mainstay electronic mailing list for an estimated 100 million school librarians in 2 million countries, on a dozen other planets, and at least two identified alternative universes. It produces in excess of a billion e-mail messages each day - 10 billion on “recipe day.” (These numbers are rough estimates.)
I was an early subscriber and participant on LM_Net using my university “vax” account back in 1992 when I first joined. This was 1200 baud modem dial-up, line interface, pre-WWW, uphill-both-directions-in-the-snow Internet days. Not soft and cushy like young‘uns have it today with your graphical interfaces and wirelessness. The computer screen was hard to read by lamplight, too.
Anyway, LM_Net became my first Internet “continuing education” experience. And the learning began early.
It was my second year as library media supervisor and I was getting lots of push-back from the district librarians I had inherited. I was determined to make them tech integration specialists and they seemed just as determined to remain print-only librarians. After one particularly frustrating day, I turned on my computer, opened my e-mail, and just let rip about the reactionary, troglodytic, myopic, nature of school librarians, concluding that they had better damn well wake-up and smell the coffee or they would all be replaced with techs and not to let the door hit ‘m where the good lord split’m on the way out. And off the rant went to LM_Net.
Let me put it this way - I got some reaction. I knew librarians had good vocabularies, but even I learned some new words. I believe after that other LM_Netters opened my e-mails simply wondering what idiotic thing I might say next. In LM_Net I found my voice.
But more importantly, I found colleagues who offered information, encouragement, and support. It was my first true “continuous learning” experience not because I was the one doing the teaching, but because we were all learning together – as we do to this day. The virtual community built by LM_Net (a professional learning community before they were so named) was a lifeline and sanity-keeper for many of us.
Reader Comments (3)
Thanks for letting us know. I'm not working in a school at the moment, so I wouldn't have known about the plea. The Paypal link didn't work correctly, but I'll figure it out.
I am late comer to LM_NET-- I only started in 1996. It was recommended by one of my professors at SJSU (actually i think it was required) and darned if LM_NET didn't teach me more than that professor-- more than all of my professors combined. What a jewel it was, is, and will be. Doug, I think you may have fudged some of the numbers (except for recipe day) but the volume of information is amazing. And who doesn't enjoy getting input from alternate universes every once in a while (seriously, there area few posters who do appear to be aliens).
Give to LM_NET. As of yesterday morning fewer than 10% of the users had donated. We are all watching our budgets but now we need LM_NET more than ever.
Thanks, Jude. You'll sleep better at night for having contributed.
Doug
Thanks, Anthony. I've long respected you as a regular contributor to the LM_Net conversations - even before blogs, Nings, etc!
Doug