Listservs Electronic Conferences for Scholars and Researchers Electronic conferences, often known as listserv conferences , are an important resource for researchers and scholars in the disciplines. New scholars in particular get an opportunity to discover what topics are being discussed in their field, to learn who is involved in these discussions, and to make themselves known within their discipline by their own contributions. Seasoned scholars exchange or reflect upon ideas. Calls for papers often first appear in electronic forums. Listserv conferences are accessed by subscription.
Subscribers receive messages, known as postings , in their e-mail.
To subscribe to a listserv conference, one generally sends an e-mail message to the computer that maintains the subscription list. For example, imagine that there is a listserv conference called literary-l, dedicated to the discussion of literary theory in the postmodernist academy. The conference is run from a computer at Humanist University. Notice that the subscription message is not sent to the conference itself, but to the computer software address that maintains the list. Commands to change your options or to delete your subscription will be carried out only if the listserv computer can match the address.