Practices of Communities

By Barbara Fister. I’ve been around long enough that I remember the first e-mail I ever sent (mistakenly putting the entire message in the subject line because I had no idea how it worked; the person I was trying to reply to kindly called me on the phone and talked me through it). I remember the first time I joined a professional Listserv and how amazing it was to be in conversation with several hundred professionals around the world who were interested in the same things as me. Being at a small institution where you represented a subdiscipline felt pretty lonely. You could read the literature and attend a conference once a year, if you could afford it, but otherwise shoptalk was rare and precious. Having a daily conversation with like-minded folks was wonderful. Read more...