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Dear Editors & Readers: First, I want to thank everyone who donated posts, ideas, and of course monetary contributions to our Support H-NET Day last week. As I mentioned in a post last week, this was a kickoff for a two week period of reflection on H-NET and making sure it can survive, given the current lack of support we have experienced in higher education. Therefore, I wanted to highlight the value added areas that H-NET brings to our lives. In this message, I will discuss the more than 140 Discussion Networks. A few years ago, we called these Discussion Lists, but we are experiencing a change in consciousness about electronic scholarship - and the name changed to Discussion Networks, which reflected both the technological change and the difference in our emerging mindsets about what constitutes a community. The idea of a community is to develop mutual objectives, communication and to share. While my experience with email is that it has not lessened but *increased* my workload, the Discussion Networks can save us all time and effort. For example, given the current conflicts in the Middle East, the late Professor Said's theory of Orientalism is a key idea to understand. If I just search H-ASIA, where I am a co-editor, 161 threads emerge. However - in doing a search for all Discussion Logs, I discovered 1,103 threads that used Orientalism, viewable by 10, 25, 50 or 100 messages. The sheer breadth of these entries by searching on just one word is enormous. From H-Buddhism (incorporated in a Conference Announcement) to H-Ideas (Eastern Influences on Hume), these threads can be used for scholarship, teaching, and self-reflection. Why not spend 10 minutes at the Discussion Logs at: http://www.h-net.org/lists/. In addition to the logs, there are Web sites for every single one of the 140+ discussion networks. These Web sites have useful information on recent posts, book reviews, resources, links, and sometimes educational materials such as syllabi. The promotion of Discussion Networks does not just involve the production of discussion and access to logs-- it requires the training of editors, the development of new tools, the attention to issues of intellectual property rights and editorial oversight to uphold the values of scholarly moderation. For example, at the next year's AHA the H-NET Council is developing ideas to suggest to H-NET Editors for an Editors Workshop a day preceding the conference. As I mentioned above, a community is a mutual endeavor - that means that the H-NET Council, Editors, and Staff NEED your support too. Many of these initiatives have been funded through grants and the generosity of Michigan State University. We have no choice now but to move to a phase where we rely on ourselves now and this means that our editors and readers must step up to the plate and contribute. Please, do not wait for others to do this. Whether you are reading this from H-Quilt or H-MedAnthro or H- West - EVERYONE is part of this community. Whether you can contribute $5 or $50 or $100, IT ALL COUNTS and it demonstrates YOUR commitment to this community. Please forward this message to others that may want to join our efforts, and remember to take a moment and go to the H-NET Donations Page. Allow me to review the donation possibilities. I hope you will consider making a donation at: http://www.h-net.org/donations/ You can donate online, by mail, or by phone in a secure environment. Donations of all sizes are important because only together can we make sure that H-NET can continue. As the Executive Director, Mark Kornbluh, mentioned last week it takes about $200,000 a year to pay technicians, editors, and other staff - as well as the hardware - necessary to develop and host the discussion networks, job guides, book reviews, announcements, and other initiatives. In addition to the donations page we also have a click through to all the major book vendors, so that if you click to them through H-NET, a portion of that purchase price will go to support your networks on H-NET. You can go to this site at: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/ You can click ON to the vendors from the review page above, or at the book reviews. I appreciate your consideration. Sincerely, Marilyn A. Levine, President H-NET
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