On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 15:52:52 -0500, Andrew Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Can the list be setup to personalize messages sent so a message sent to this
>person would say "Dear John" at the top? I was told that this is some sort
>of mail merge function but I can't find it in the docs.

LISTSERV 1.8d (Classic), when used in conjunction with our LSMTP mailer does
provide electronic mail-merge capability.  However the machine resource cost
is usually too high for casual mailings.  See http://www.lsoft.com/dbms.html
Further information about 1.8d http://demo.lsoft.com/demo-intro.html

>Also does anyone know of a good book (if any) on LISTSERV?

There is an O'Reilly book which discusses several Mail List Manager products
including Majordomo, Listproc, and LISTSERV(R).  However we do not recommend
it because the author apparently chose not to implement any of the
corrections we gave him when he submitted it to us for technical review.
As a matter of fact we will be doing such a book ourselves in conjunction
with some kind of List Owner/Site Manager certification program.