The following information concerns Bryn Mawr College email mailing lists (listservs) where list owners can send email to list members, and can choose to allow any member to send messages to the entire list. For information about mail merges or personalized outbound mass mailing, please contact the Help Desk at help@brynmawr.edu.
What is a Mailing List?
A mailing list is simply a list of addresses to which the same information is being sent. Two common types of email mailing lists are announcement lists and discussion lists. Announcement lists are used so that one person or group can send announcements to a group of people, and a discussion list is used to allow a group of people to discuss topics amongst themselves, with everyone able to send mail to the list and have it distributed to everyone in the group.
Bryn Mawr College uses a piece of software called Mailman for our lists. We have a mix of announcement and discussion lists, some of which are moderated, and others of which are unmoderated or “open.” One can subsribe to or manage mailing lists at http://newmailman.brynmawr.edu.
Personal and Organizational Mailing Lists
Any community member can request the creation of a new list for themselves or on behalf of any group or organization who they are authorized to represent simply by filling out the form at https://td.brynmawr.edu/TDClient/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=284. Lists can contain both on- and off-campus members. Moderation and other settings can be selected by the list owner on a per-list basis.
If you want to send a message to an entire segment of the community, please use one of the above lists rather than building your own list. The college-run lists are updated as people move in and out of the community.
Personal mailing lists cannot be mandatory or automatically maintained. List owners must allow members to unsubscribe at will.
Communicating with the Campus Community
Please see this information from College Communications about how to send out information for the campus community via the Daily Digest.
Prior to the Daily Digest, individuals used mailing lists (listservs) to send mass emails. These listservs still exist and include many niche lists as well as others that encompass large segments of the Bryn Mawr community.
Lists for faculty, staff, each undergraduate class, and each graduate school are automatically maintained. These lists are intended to be used in a very limited fashion for important information that pertains to all members of each list. Examples would include (but are not limited to) messages from the President’s Office, housing information for students, human resources updates for faculty and staff, or faculty governance information for the faculty.
Communications does not moderate or administer these listservs.
Any community member can submit information to the DailyDigest and, in the summer when Daily Digest is less frequent, to the listservs for particular campus constituent groups. In order to be sure that information submitted is consistent with the intended use of the listservs, posts must be approved by a list moderator; the messages will not be sent to the recipients until approved. Most lists are approved once or twice a day; please plan ahead to ensure that time sensitive messages are received in a a timely fashion.
Note: Daily Digest or listserv messages that contain announcements in the form of a flyer or image should also include the text of the announcement in the body of the e-mail. Text that appears only in images or attachments cannot be read by the screen reading software that visually impaired community members use and it can also be difficult for the increasing number of community members who read e-mail on their phones to view. Make sure everyone knows about your event by including text with the name, date, location, and other important details in your daily digest announcement.
To send a message to a particular group, email to the appropriate address from the list below.
Please note that since these are official College lists used for critical College communications, community members are automatically added to these lists and are required to be on those lists which are relevant to their respective community roles. Library & Information Technology Services cannot remove individuals from the role-appropriate lists. If you are not receiving email from one of these lists and should be (or vice versa), please contact the Help Desk.
Other Campus Lists and Their Uses
A number of additional lists are maintained automatically or by administrative departments for particular types of communication. These are predominantly announcement lists, and each of them has their own moderator and posting rules. The following are some common lists:
Sends to: entire community
Administered by: Communications
Enrollment: Automatic Mandatory
Description: Reserved for messages of importance for the entire campus community such as experimentation policies and payroll information; and for messages from the President. Unlike the all-campus list (above), messages to this list need not be approved by individual list moderators.
Sends to: subscribed members
Administered by: Student Activities
Enrollment: Optional, Self-Managed
Description: Messages about campus activities, focused on undergraduate students. Announcements regarding campus activities, such as lectures, performances, colloquia, parties, and other community events. This is an optional listserv that any community member may subscribe to or unsubscribe from at any time; new students are subscribed by default each fall but may unsubscribe.
Sends to: entire community
Administered by: Campus Safety
Enrollment: Automatic Mandatory
Description: Reserved for messages of importance for the entire campus community such as power outages, weather events, parking notices, and urgent security issues or threats. Only designated members of Campus Safety such as Lillian Burroughs may send content through this list. This list is used in conjunction with the Everbridge notification system to provide critical information.
Sends to: subscribed members
Administered by: Provost’s Office
Enrollment: Automatic for faculty, optional for others
Description: These lists are designed to communicate with academic community members.
Sends to: subscribed members
Administered by: Dean’s Office
Enrollment: Optional, Self-Managed
Description: Intended to be used for announcements to UG students about programs, events and opportunities that are primarily related to academic or scholarly life at the College. Common examples of these include major teas, guest lectures and panel discussions. The list is administered by the Dean’s Office staff and announcements will be forwarded within one business day of receipt.
List Policies and Abuses
Sometimes outside spam messages are submitted via unmoderated lists. If you are receiving spam messages via a list, please contact the list owner. List owners should contact the Help Desk for help with controlling spam messages being sent through lists they administer.
Most campus lists allow only very small attachments, for a maximum message size of 100KB. Please post large content to a Web location and link to it.
If you have any questions about these guidelines, please contact the Help Desk at x7440 or help@brynmawr.edu.