Further advice on appropriate lists to use
With three buildings, several categories of staff, undergraduate and graduate students, not to mention a large number of committees the department has a long (over 80) list of mailing lists. It can be difficult to decide which one or combination is the most appropriate to use for a particular communication.
If you want to contact what might be termed “all Mathematical Institute staff” you should use the following combination:
- academic-faculty-announce
- research-fellows-announce
- pdra-announce
- support-staff-announce
Note: teaching-faculty-announce is a completely separate mailing list relating to the teaching faculty of mathematics and includes people outside the department and is intended for use mainly for faculty of mathematics teaching matters.
If in addition you wish to include affiliate members of the Mathematical Institute (affiliates are generally individuals who are employed elsewhere in the university but are involved with research within Mathematical Institute research groups) you should add:
- affiliate-faculty-announce
- affiliate-researchers-announce
If in addition you wish to include emeritus members of the Mathematical Institute you should add:
- emeritus-announce
If in addition you wish to include Mathematical Institute post graduate students you should add:
- postgrad-announce
For convenience there is an umbrella list members-announce which will pass a message on to each of
- academic-faculty-announce
- affiliate-faculty-announce
- emeritus-announce
- research-fellows-announce
- pdra-announce
- affiliate-researchers-announce
- support-staff-announce
- postgrad-announce
This list is thus particularly useful for announcements relevant to general building or IT issues which one would generally expect to announce to all members.
Note there is also a support-staff-discuss list which does not contain all the support staff and is for less formal discussion/information amongst those support staff subscribed.
If in addition you wish to include undergraduate students you should add:
- ug-year1-announce
- ug-year2-announce
- ug-year3-announce
- ug-year4-announce
As a rule of thumb messages about building matters and security matters should go to all the above even if the matter appears to be about an individual building: staff and students move between buildings and need to be aware of what’s going on in each one.
If you receive a “circular-type” email take note of how it has come to you, i.e. as an individual or as a member of a mailing list. If the latter, take note of which mailing list it has come through and consider carefully whether by forwarding it to another group you will be creating duplicate postings. For example a message from the Departmental Administrator about Dartington House that has gone to all the above lists would not then have to be forwarded to other local groups within Dartington House such as OCIAM or CMB.
Large attachments can be problematic and can cause your message to bounce back. See the departmental mailing list FAQ page for full guidance. Because people don’t all use the same operating system it is best when sending attachments to send them as pdf documents (rather than say Word or LaTeX).