Hello all,

Background:

I'm the owner of an 800-member community list that's been hosted on a university
listserv machine for about 14 years. Our host has accommodated us out of
civic-mindedness and also because there was very little marginal cost in
supporting us. In recent years, most of the university users have migrated their
lists to other acad and admin products -- Blackboard for courses, etc.

With so many other users gone, my list is now proportionally much larger than it
used to be. So management has decided to move the remaining lists to the
cloud-based listserv; supporting them will incur real costs. So my list must
vacate by the end of August.

As it happens, the community already has a successful NextDoor group, and many
of my subscribers already subscribe there too. So each remaining member of my
list will be able to move over to NextDoor without too much disruption.

The Big Question:

How can we preserve the listserv archive? The vast majority of messages are,
individually, of only momentary interest, but as a whole, the archive represents
a rich 14-year history of the community. A few historians and other social
scientists in the neighborhood might well benefit from being able to mine this
cultural artifact. The community has a website; alternatively, one of my members
runs a small ISP and has offered to host the archive, if we can find a way to
preserve and port it. I'd rather not lose it when we leave the listserv server!

Any advice you can offer will be greatly appreciated!

Best regards,

Mike Feldman

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