Listservs

In a little over ten years after the utilization of email by APRAnet, the City University of New York had developed the Because It's Time Network, or Bitnet, as another source of news and information in 1983. Rather than logging onto a newsgroup to check postings, users send a request by e-mail to a mechanism called a Listserv, which allows them to subscribe to a particular discussion group, called a List. Articles posted by users are then sent to the subscribers via e-mail by the Listserv, similar to the magazine subscription process.

While Bitnet has decreased in popularity, Listservs still continue to grow in popularity with subjects ranging from professional groups to discussion groups for university courses to lists for recreational chat. What we use today is the Revised Listserv, a completely automated system, which was developed at the Ecole Centrale de Paris.

• Education Listservs (Includes K-12)
• General Listservs