>What about the possibility of a newsfeed from usenet of all their topics
>going by way of LISTSERV ...
>....      where would the notebook specs be kept?  Would the traffic of
>all of the newsfeeds be too much for LISTSERV/BITNET ?  What about
>submission back to/through usenet?
 
Please don't even think about it. The usenet stuff is VERY HIGH volume.
Keeping notebooks? You will have to keep more than 1MB/day.
 
There are two implementations of News for VM, which allow to read
all this stuff under VM. Although it is technically no problem
to interconnect these VM News sites, it is not recommended due to
the network load. But if this stuff (or a part thereof) is to be
sent via Bitnet, the Netnews mechanism should be used, because:
- integration into the Listserv world would result in naming
  problems (how to map comp.foobar.junk.pc.digest onto 8 chars)
- Because a name mapping is necessary, a global mapping table
  is to be maintained (no sane person will ever do this)
- Although it is very easy (at least in theory) to gateway the
  Listserv lists into Netnews groups, the other way around is
  problematic. And if you are not a fan of mailing loops, you'll better
  be pretty careful.
 
The reason for the last problem is the different transport mechanism.
Usenet (and also the VM Netnews implementations) allow an arbitrary
topology of interconnected feeds. Duplicates will be elimated.
This allows redundant routes. But ONLY ONE SITE IN THIS WHOLE
WORLD should be allowed to gateway Netnews articles to a Listserv list.
In theory it would be sufficient if only that site where an article
is originally posted, would send it to (a peer of) a Listserv list.
But considering the inhomogenous world of the Usenet news system,
I'll bet that this would either generate multiple copies or missing
submissions.
 
The Netnews mechanism of eliminating duplicates would be usefull
for Listserv too (imagine a really operational LINKFAIL list, made
reliable by redundant interconnected peers, even a cut off end node
could hear what's going on because the list is routed via Usenet too :-)
But you have to pay a high price for this additional security and
reliability: additional CPU cycles and disk space.
 
Actually I'm running both Listserv and Netnews here and I'm relatively
happy with this combo. Listserv is the best tool for Bitnet mailing
lists, and Netnews allow me to read this stuff without the necessity
to wade through an overfull reader every morning to look for personal
mail. Furthermore I may read all this Usenet stuff (fed from my Unix
neighbour) without walking to a Unix terminals (those saved two
meters are making my day :-)  and my Unix colleagues may read Bitnet
lists in the environment they are familiar with.
 
I believe that this is the best way to merge both worlds. Unfortunately
there is no free lunch, you are paying with additional maintenance
overhead (not to mention CPU cycles and disk space).
 
  Thomas