September 2000 Newsletter

Electronic Roster and Research List

Amy L. S. Staples

Middle Tennessee State University

Looking for a colleague's address? A commentator for your SHAFR session? Someone to suggest a text for the U.S. diplomatic history survey? Now you can electronically search SHAFR's Roster and Research List. This service is free of charge and provided as a service to SHAFR members. However, we need your help to make the site as useful as possible. Currently, the only information available on the site are the names and mailing addresses of SHAFR members, which have been downloaded from Blackwell's mailing list for Diplomatic History. We ask all members to log on to the site and supplement this information with your current research interests, the courses you have taught, your e-mail address, and a phone and/or fax number where you can be reached. Of course, you may also log on in order to request that your information remain unlisted. To log onto the site, all you need is the mailing label from your most recent issue of Diplomatic History. In the top left-hand corner of the label is your customer number, which you will need to receive your password. If you have lost this information, you may also e-mail Blackwell Publisher.

This website is the result of joint action by the SHAFR Council and Blackwell Publishers over the last year. At the January Council meeting, the ad hoc committee on publications that was chaired by Chester Pach suggested and the Council agreed that the print version of the roster and research list last published in 1996 should be replaced by a wholly electronic version. The main advantage of such a move, the committee argued, was the ability to maintain a more up-to-date and accessible version of the information than was currently possible in print form. Financial provision for the roster had already been made in SHAFR's contract with Blackwell, and it was decided that all these funds should be put toward the construction and maintenance of the electronic roster and research list on Blackwell's website. At the June Council meeting, Amy Staples, acting as facilitator for the project, reported on the site's progress and received a number of helpful suggestions for the operation of the site, which became fully operational at the end of July thanks to the tireless efforts of the Blackwell staff led by Malcolm Crystal, Jess Sanderson, and Jane Waters.

The site itself is not password-protected (except for the pages where members can add or revise their individual information) so that the information will be accessible to other scholars as well as news organizations that might be seeking expert opinions on issues. This decision was in keeping with the discussions at this year's plenary session on the necessity of SHAFR's reaching out to a broader academic and policymaking community. Searches on the site can be conducted by a specific term, such as a last name or a course title, or by a specific geographical, chronological, or topical category, each of which has a pull-down menu. These menus are revised versions of those that appeared in the print version of the research list with additions drawn from Edward Goedeken's annual dissertation list, which appears annually in the SHAFR Newsletter. But recognizing that such categorization often does not convey the true character of our research interests, members can explain their research in a 100-word statement that is a new feature of this version of the roster and research list.

We hope that this will be valuable new resource for the SHAFR membership as well as the broader academic and policymaking community, but it will only be as useful as the SHAFR membership makes it by recording their research and teaching interests. Also, as you make use of the site, we hope that you will report any problems, concerns, or suggestions to Amy Staples; and/or Blackwell Publisher. We anticipate making changes to the site after we have had some time to evaluate the site as currently constructed and to collect feedback from the SHAFR membership.