North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Claude Sweet <sweetent@home.com>]

Participation in this list should be promoted to the general gardening
public as part of the out reach efforts that are usually a requirement
of IRS non-profit organizations.

The existing forum provides the opportunity to acquaint member with the
joy and pleasure of growing fruiting plants as part of their landscape
or in home orchards. I consider this as a form of public service
advertising that can result in more people joining NAFEX.

Access to NAFEX publications should be a membership privilege associated
with the NAFEX web site.

There is no reason to adopt an either or approach to distribution of
NAFEX publications - printed verses electronic. Please note that the
majority of the effort is in the gathering and organization of the
information. There some differences between desktop publishing and html
authoring, but the basic information (text and graphic files produced by
a computer) is the same. In fact, the reduced printing and mailing costs
could be used to pay someone to assemble the electronic versions to
provide the option for those who choose the electronic distribution.

While I share with others the pleasure of reading horticultural
publications while relaxing in various chairs or while otherwise
occupied, the regular arrival of multiple books and magazines on a
monthly basis pose a serious storage problem and household clutter that
can irritate even the most loving spouse.

I don't think we will seem a completely paper less society while I am
still alive (I am 61), but I would love to have the NAFEX publications
on a CD or accessible from a web site. I am now attempting to cull 30
years of horticultural magazines as I no longer have storage space and
refuse to continue paying $60 a month for a self storage unit. Reduced
revenues in retirement combined with soaring high gasoline, electric,
natural gas, and food costs require some prioritizing I have not felt
the need to consider in previous years.

Email message groups usually only have links to materials contained on
the sponsoring organizations web site. I believe that a special access
code can be built into the email message link to provide access only to
an approved list rather than the general public being able to do a
remote search to locate and access the pages.

My email settings allow messages to be received in html format, but some
people can not or do not accept html messages. Thus two types of email
messages are required so the site would support text only based
materials as an option for those individuals with slower internet access
and/or older internet browser.

The value of this forum is that it allows people with various levels of
horticultural expertise to interact. People who only have a few trees
can get reliable information, while those who are more passionate about
growing fruiting plants can quickly communicate with others share
similar interests around the world. The only constriction being that
English is the only language supported which can preclude the
participation of non-English speaking participants. As our group's name
is North American Fruit Explorers, I assume that this includes our
friendly neighbors, both North and South of our borders, speaking French
and Spanish, as well as those inside our borders whose primary language
is not English.

The biggest asset of NAFEX is the expertise of its members, their
willingness to communication their knowledge, and share plant material.

I hope everyone has a joyful holiday season. looking forward to an
energized New Year in 2001, the first year of the next century.

Claude Sweet
San Diego, CA
zone 10

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