OIT (Office of Information Technology) provides a mailing and discussion list service to members of the Brown community. Use this form to request the creation of a new list.
Listserv, the list server, provides a wide range of features to meet many requirements. Features include access control, archiving of lists, automatic generation of digests, and web page access to lists and their archives. The requirements for most lists are included in this form, but the form is not comprehensive. For any additional requirements your list may have, use the section provided at the end of the form.
For additional information about Listserv, refer to the Listserv documentation. (opens in new tab) For questions about list creation and this form, or any other Listserv questions, contact the Listserv manager, listmaint@brown.edu
These lists are intended for Brown-related purposes that are consistent with the mission of the University. Lists requested for other institutions or for personal use will not be approved.
If you are requesting a list for a course, OIT offers several other mailing list options which may be more suitable. See Course Email services (opens in new tab) for more information.
Note: All fields below are required, except those identified as optional.
The address for the list will be listname@listserv.brown.edu. When choosing a list name, try to choose a name which is fairly short, yet is still specific about the purpose of the list. When that's not possible, a longer name is preferred to a less specific one. In many cases the names of lists end with -L in order to avoid confusion with non-list addresses. However, that is not a requirement.
The list name is not case-sensitive. The name cannot contain blanks, and the only punctuation marks allowed are hyphens and underscores.
The title which will be used to describe the list. The title is used for the list web page, and in e-mail distributed to the list. An example would be Brown University Computer Users List. The title should be roughly 50 characters or less, and should be phrased to end with List when possible.
The list description is provided by Listserv when information is requested about a public list. The description is optional, and can be as long as necessary (optional.)
The person responsible for managing the list. Multiple list owners are allowed. It's required that at least one list owner be affiliated with Brown.
Mail distributed to the list which cannot be delivered results in error mail being returned. By default the error mail will be sent to the list owner. The Errors-To address allows having someone else handle the error mail. Multiple errors-to addresses are allowed. Leave these blank for errors to go to the list owner.
A list may be either a discussion list or an announcement list. Discussion lists allow subscribers to post to the list, while announcement lists are one-way lists from the list manager(s) to the subscribers. The Listserv default is a discussion list.
Mail distributed to a discussion list will contain a "Reply-To" header field for controlling how replies are handled. Replies can either go to the list or to the original sender of the mail. The Listserv default is for replies to go to the list. This setting is not used for announcement lists.
Listserv archives postings to lists, and provides facilities for searching and retrieving postings . This feature is provided by default, but can be disabled if you prefer that the list not be archived. List security options (the next section) control whether the archives are public or restricted to subscribers.
Listserv can either accept or reject postings to your list that contain attachments. There is a risk in accepting attachments, because e-mail viruses spread using attachments. For that reason, the Listserv default is to reject attachments. However, if attachments are important to the purpose of your list, they can be allowed.
Lists can be completely public or have various levels of restricted access. The most common security settings are:
Many other combinations of security options are available. To request other combinations and options, choose Other list settings and fill-in the requirements in Additional List Requirements below.
If your list has security requirements not covered by the above choices, or has other requirements not included in this form, describe them below (optional.)
The owner(s) of a list can add and remove subscribers at any time. However, as a convenience, when the list is created, an initial list of subscribers can be provided. Subscribers added in this way will not be notified that they have been added.
If needed, provide the subscriber list below. Specify one subscriber per line, and provide the e-mail address followed by the real name. For example:
Josiah_Carberry@brown.edu Josiah Carberry
Both the e-mail address and the real name are required to add a subscriber. However, for brown.edu addresses in the form firstname_lastname@brown.edu, the name may be omitted and firstname lastname will be used as the name.
Note: The list owner and errors-to addresses should be included if they should be subscribed, as those addresses are not subscribed automatically.
The lines in the list must be formatted as shown above. In particular, the e-mail address must be first on each line. Also, within the list there should be no blank lines.
When you click on Continue you will be given an opportunity to verify your entries are correct.