Electronic Newsletter Delivery: From Email to World Wide Web

Originally published in. Proc. Sixth International Conference on Computers in Agriculture, American Society of Agricultural Engineers, Cancun, MX, pp. 867-871, 1996.

Tom Sanford

Abstract

For thirteen years, the author has electronincally published the Cooperative Extension Service beekeeping newsletter, APIS. During this period, the newsletter's evolution very much paralleled that of the general electronic networking environment. It was first distributed via an electronic mailing list maintained by the author. Back issues were archived at several sites when gopher technology developed. Subsequently, the newsletter became key-word searchable, and finally, developed into a full-blown World Wide Web site. The future of the newsletter, as well as like services provided by Cooperative Extension, will be explored in relation to the rapidly changing information delivery system we know today as the Internet.

Keywords: Information Delivery Systems; Internet Applications; Beekeeping Newsletter, Apis mellifera.

Introduction

The United States Cooperative Extension Service is considered to be one of the major change agents in agriculture. The service represented a major paradigm shift in the early 1900s, by providing practical information to farmers based on research accomplished at institutions of higher learning. This educational model has become one of the most successful ever implemented and has been emulated by many other countries.

Originally, the major activities of the Cooperative (at that time called "agricultural") extension agents were to visit farmers on site and provide specific analysis. Over time, discussions with individuals were augmented by conducting educational meetings. The amount of travelling done by extension agents was one key to the program's success. Unfortunately, this one-on-one kind of interactions has been reduced over the years as transportation costs have risen.

Throughout its existence, Cooperative Extension has been primarily print based. Much of its published information continues to be available for free from agents in every county around the nation. Recently, however, because of rising costs, more and more states have gone to a payment system. Whether or not to charge for what is essentially tax-supported information, continues to be a major conundrum for Cooperative Extension. The revolution in electronic commuications in the 1980s, however, has conveniently provided an alternative outlet for Cooperative Extension to deliver practical advice at very low cost. Beyond this, is the possibilty to use this technology to more widely disseminate information than was ever possible in the past.

History of Florida's Cooperative Extension Beekeeping Newsletter

The first beekeeping specialist in the Florida Cooperative Extension Service was John D. Haynie. "Honey Haynie" began a newsletter called Hum of the Hive in the 1950s. It was regularly published until his retirement in 1971. Hum of the Hive was taken up by Dr. Danny R. Minnick in September 1971. His "last issue" was written in August of 1972. At that time, 1,800 hundred persons subscribed. During the late 1970s, Dr. Freddie Johnson of the faculty of Entomology and Nematology sporadically authored the newsletter along with Frank Robinson until July 1981. The following month's issue was written by the current author, Dr. Malcolm T. Sanford, who continues this four-decade publication tradition. In February 1983, APIS-Apicultural Information and Issues evolved from Hum of the Hive, taking on a different format and logo. Although the number of subscribers had declined to just over 1,000 since the high reported in 1972, the newsletter continued to be available for free through the U.S. mail.

Electronic Delivery of APIS Begins

Because it was the only monthly beekeeping newsletter published regularly in the United States, there are continual requests for APIS from across the nation and around the world. It was impossible in the past, however, to respond positively to all of these because of printing and mailing costs. It would have been unfair to Florida citizens to have to foot this bill on their own. One possibility would have been to charge a fee for the newsletter, something that was seriously taken under consideration for a number of years.

In the early 1980s, however, the use of digital computer-based information delivery became a reality. The APIS newsletter was the first publication of its kind to be delivered over the "Because its Time Network" or BITNET. The initial electronic issue came out in February of 1984. Because this network was academically based, it was now possible to make the newsletter more widely available to other institutions of higher learning around the nation and world. Individual beekeepers, however, the actual clientele for whom the publication was composed, could still only get it by mail or indirectly from those institutions.

APIS on the Internet

It was not long after the first electronic issue, however, until the Internet began to replace BITNET as the information delivery method of choice. During the latter 1980s, the author began to develop an extensive electronic address list. In time it became unwieldy and prompted development of a batch mail facility on the University of Florida, IFAS or College of Agriculture mainframe computer. Principally due to these developments, the author was able to continue to publish the newsletter, even while on sabbatical leave in Italy (1989), and while away as a Volunteer in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (VOCA) volunteer (1992).

The IFAS mainframe, now a minicomputer, meanwhile developed an online database with a huge amount of Cooperative Extension information, including the APIS newsletter. Now two major electronic outlets for the newsletter were possible. One was active, a list kept by the author, the other, somewhat more passive, a listing of back issues available to College of Agriculture personnel with mainframe accounts.

When Gopher, a text based menu-driven technology was developed at the University of Minnesota, however, the next step in the newsletter's electronic evolution became a reality. APIS began to be archived at various Gopher servers around the nation and world. Finally, the University of Florida, College of Agriculure online database which held back issues also became an accessible gopher node. At the present time, all electronic issues are archived at that site and are key-word searchable. The address is gopher://ifas.ufl.edu. This development meant that the newsletter at last was available worldwide to practically anyone with computer and modem via the Internet.

As an outgrowth of his experiences, the author published his analysis of using electronic technology to publish the newsletter in a professional journal (Sanford, 1993). In addition, APIS was officially recognized as a pioneering electronic publication in a book sent to all congress persons as a lobbying document in support of funding the National Information Infrastructure or NII (Stone-Martin and Breeden, 1994). Many of the stories in this document revealed how Cooperative Extension was using the Internet or Information Superhighway to carry out its mission.

APIS on the Web

The latest step in the electronic evolution of the APIS newseltter is its presence on the World Wide Web. The address is:

http://ifas.ufl.edu/~entweb/apis/apis.htm

This site was awarded three stars from Magellan, the McKinley comprehensive internet directory in 1996. It lists over 1.5 million sites on the Internet.

At the present time, the four most recent years' issues have been marked up in the Web's hypertext markup language (HTML). Other back issues are also available in ascii text format from the web site.

The ability to skip within and between documents provided by HTML has added several dimensions to the newsletter. Not only is an abbreviated master index available in ASCII text for all back issues, but now yearly indexes have been added which point to individual numbers. Each issue also contains a table of contents. Thus, sections of newsletters are now instantly reachable from either from an index or within individual other documents. More importantly, these can also be accessed from any other site worldwide 24 hours per day.

Graphics have also been added. The newsletter logo was originally featured on the beginning screen or "home page." and was also placed at the top of each individual issue. Recently the home page, as well as the 1993 through 1996 index pages, have been enhanced with coordinated background and text colors per newest versions of the Web's primary browser, Netscape® . For those not using the newer browser or others that don't support graphics, howevever, there is the option to choose a more plain vanilla version.

Future Developments

With World Wide Web capabilities, the APIS newsletter has reached a watershed. For thirteen years it was published as single issues. In order to find and see previous information, one had to scour back paper or electronic numbers on one-by-one basis, or scan an abbreviated master index. Now, however, because of internal links placed in each issue, the newsletter is metamorphosing into a large, single database. Virtually any section of any issue is now accessible from any other place in the document. In addition, other documents may be linked which are referred to in newsletters. For example, a paper given by the author at a pollination conference and published in the proceedings is accessible from a smaller article in the newsletter on commerical pollination potentials for beekeepers.

The other possibilities brought on by this linking technology are enormous. What comes quickly to mind is indexing all issues by key words. Additionally there is the possibility of incorporating into the document graphics and sound to add dimension to the textual information. In the future, even video clips may be used as supplementary material to the newsletter.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the evolution of the monthly Cooperative Extension newsletter APIS has paralleleled the general development of electronic communications. Specifically this means evolving from a single electronic mail message into a database of over a decade of past issues. This portented an even more dramatic evolution in form, however, with development of the World Wide Web. What was a single four-page publication is now an interlinked document consisting of almost two hundred past issues and available worlwide.

Where the information revolution goes from here is not known. What is clear is that Cooperative Extension cannot rely only on its former paradigm of information delivery. Like the APIS newsletter, there will continue to be huge impetus to become an integral part of the information superhighway.

References

Stone-Martin, M. and L. Breeden, eds. 1994. 51 Reasons: How We Use the Internet and What it Says About the Information Superhighway, Farnet, Inc., Lexington, MA.

Sanford, M.T. 1993. "Communicating in the 'Global Village.'" American Entomologist 39:1 pp. 8-9.

Return to top of page