Re: Aroid l archive]

**S* M* <samarak@gizmoworks.com>**

Steve,

The archives at Hort.net aren't maintained by anyone in the IAS or by me 
as part of Aroid-L - as you know, Hort.net archives many botanical and 
horticultural lists. 

I don't know if they have some site policy on how long to keep mailing 
list archives, but it's entirely possible that they only started archiving 
Aroid-L in 1996. Remember that Aroid-L has been around since before there 
was much of a World Wide Web (anyone else remember "gopher"?) and before 
there were the sophisticated archiving options we take for granted now. 
I'm a little surprised they have 13 years worth!

I have attempted to keep copies of all posts from the very beginning. I 
say "attempted" because, although paranoia is a way of life and not an 
illness when you work in IT and I normally keept at least 3 or 4 copies of 
important files, that's a lot of disk failures ago, and some of the media 
are pretty old and weren't all that reliable when they were new. 

But I will see what I can find. It'll probably take a while, since I may 
have to rent excavating equipment for all the old floppies and 
magneto-optical disks and DAT tapes ...

Steve

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, ExoticRainforest wrote:

> I just went to the site to do a search and discovered that all the posts
> prior to 1996 have been eliminated.  Is there any way to recover all of
> these for my personal files?  I'll gladly convert all of them to PDF
> format since they are extremely valuable!  This would be a great loss to
> the IAS to not have the input of past members no longer available.
> 
> Steve
> > 
> Marek, since I suspect you have a something to do with the Aroid l
> archives I'm directing this question to you but if anyone else knows the
> answer or what I'm doing wrong please do chime in.
> 
> I often use the Aroid l archives to research the plants in my collection,
> especially when I'm working on a new page for web page.  I especially
> like to read the older posts which include a many posts from members that
> have since passed including Dr. Birdsey as well as some of the world's
> best known aroid botanists that rarely participate today.  Tom, I'm
> certainly not including you and we all appreciate your incredible
> responses.
> 
>   Of late, even though I tick off all the years, I only get responses
> from the past few years.  Is there a reason for this or something else I
> should be doing?  Do I need to specify only the early years?
> 
> http://www.hort.net/lists/aroid-l/search.pl
> 
> To those of you that don't know the archive exists you may want to begin
> using it when you have basic questions.  Certainly, feel free to ask it
> here but you may be surprised at the depth of knowledge already
> available.

-- Steve Marak
-- samarak@gizmoworks.com