My first exposure to list-serves was when I was I college. My department required everyone to sign up for the departmental list-serve the first week of classes. Back then list-serves were pretty simple. You send an email to an email address, usually something along the lines of subscribe@blah.com, then you would automatically be signed up to receive all of the messages that were sent to the group.
If you are not familiar with list-serves, list-serves are essentially email groups that allow groups of people to email everyone on the list simultaneously. Everyone on the list usually has something in common. For instance I am now a member of a writing list-serve. Everyday members of he group will send writing jobs they’ve come across and then that email is sent to everyone who is signed up for the list. List-serves can be a great way to communicate with others, and also a great way to get a ton of unwanted spam.
If you have a group then a list-serve can be an excellent way to communicate with them. List-serves usually allow users to subscribe to your emails if they want to receive them, and if you are the administrator of the group you can dictate who can send messages and who cannot to the entire group.
A list-serve beats trying to type every single persons email address into the “To” column in your email program. It also completely eliminates people emailing you asking to be taken off your list, or accusing you of sending spam. A list-serve is voluntary, and if someone wants to be removed from your list they can simply remove themselves.
Both yahoo and google offer “Google Groups” and “Yahoo Groups” which allow you to create a list-serve for your organization. The group will also get its own password-protected webpage where you can post group calendar or group contact information. A list-serve can be a great way to get your group organized and centralized on the web. All of your emails aware usually archived on the group’s site, so if someone joins the group late in the game they can still catch up on what they’ve missed.