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Prairienet List Services

The Prairienet Community Network offers email discussion lists (aka mailing lists or listservs) as a community service at no cost to qualifying non-profit organizations and groups. As of September 2007, Prairienet is hosting over 250 lists reaching a total almost 46,000 subscribers.

The following may request free mailing lists:

• any non-profit organization or group located in East Central Illinois
• any state-wide non-profit organization operating in Illinois as a 501(c)3
• Advanced Web Hosting account holders (non-profit Information Providers with virtual domains)
• any non-profit group with an active iLab

Our mailing lists carry no ads and list owners have complete control over list configuration.

Lists have 'no strings attached' except for the following: listowners agree to distribute a fundraising appeal on behalf of Prairienet to their subscribers (generally no more than once a year).

The Prairienet Community Network is a community service of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and donations are tax-deductible.

Illinois organizations that do not meet the requirements for a free list or that do not wish to participate in fundraising may inquire about fee-based list hosting. Email the Prairienet List Manager at .

Prairienet uses the mailing list management program, Mailman. You may already be familiar with other mail list managers such as ListProc or Listserv. Many people find Mailman more convenient and easier to use than email-based mail list managers. Mailman

• Web-based subscribing and unsubscribing, and user configuration management. Users can temporarily disable their accounts, select digest modes, hide their email addresses from other members, etc.
• Fully Web-based list configuration and management for listowners and moderators
• A customizable home page for each mailing list (example).
• Email confirmation of subscription request submitted via the Web. Optionally can also require approval of listowner.
• Per-list privacy features, such as closed-subscriptions, private archives, private membership rosters, and sender-based posting rules.
• Per-list content filtering to minimize spam and virus-generated problems.
• Public or private Web archives (larger archives may carry $35/year annual fee)
• Support for a variety of list types from open discussion lists, private lists, to moderated and one-way announcement lists
• Automatic detection and disposition of bouncing addresses (disable, unsubscribe).

[Read more about Mailman Off-site link.]

Prairienet offers extensive online help as well as email tech support for listowners.

Many thanks to the good folks at Computing & Communications, University of Washington for giving us permission to adapt their Mailman documentation.