User Groups and List Servs - General Resources
 

What is a User Group?  It is a community of computer users who come together through the Internet to learn, to share experiences and to serve their community. 

1. Provide education on Computer and Software - using your computer more efficiently allow you to:

   • keep pace with industry trends

   • learn about new hardware and software

   • organize meetings for users and education for the community

2. Establish and maintain community service projects

   • support local organizations, such as schools, senior centers and charities

   • recycle used computers and software

3. Share information and experience through

   • exchange of information between experienced individuals focused on specific issues

   • general meetings of general and special interest groups

   • establish and maintain newsletters and bulletins boards

   • learn to use web sites efficiently

There are general user groups and user groups focusing on specific issues.  A search of the Internet or the links below will help to identify a group that will serve your needs.  If you find a specific group that should be included on our site please send us the link

ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION GROUPS aka LISTSERVS, also called mailing lists, are a way of communicating via email on various topics of interest by joining a particular email discussion group. LISTSERV is a program whereby emails sent to a mailing list are then forwarded to everyone else on that mailing list. Mailing List Tips has general information about how to subscribe and post to mailing lists. To search for a particular LISTSERV topic go to CataList, the catalog of LISTSERV lists or Liszt: Directory of E-Mail Discussion Groups. If you still can't find a listserv related to your subject matter, try looking in some of the places listed below. Also, you could visit a related newsgroup and ask if there is a mailing list on that topic. Or you might find out about a listserv while researching your topic at a website.

Some mailing lists have archived their previous postings and these archives are available on the internet for browsing. If you can't find the archive site for a particular listserv, you can ask about it in a post after joining that mailing list. To browse or search the various cancer list archives, go to The Medical Information Archives.

You can search for listserv groups according to topic by sending an email to this address: listserv@listserv.net. Leave the subject line blank and in body of message type: list global topic (instead of the word topic--type in your choice of topic , for example, cancer). So you would type list global cancer and you will get a list of known cancer listservs.

Occasionally a group's listing might be hard to find, for example there is a mailing list for multiple myeloma. To join send an e-mail to: listserv@listserv.acor.org leave the subject line blank and in body of e-mail type: subscribe myeloma or for the digest version type: subscribe myeloma-digest .
After joining send your posts to the following address: myeloma@listserv.acor.org.

If you are interested in starting a mailing list, here is an excellent site with information on providers and how to get started: mailing list providers.

General

Introduction to mail lists and mailing lists

Computer User Groups on the Net

List serves indexed by categories: A well-organized and fairly complete list. Here the sorting is done and you can move through a pre-built index. This resource is especially easy to use because you can subscribe right from the browser using the mailto hyperlinks

Find a User Group

At John Grohol's Psychology & Support Mailing List Pointer there is an extensive alphabetical list of many health related listservs that you can subscribe to

Yahoo User Groups

Specific Issues:

Aging - Internet Resources (AARP)

Architecture: Forums, Listservs, Newsgroups & Chat
Geneology User Groups

Cancer -  Gynecolgic/Cancer-Related List Services

Deafness Listserv

Disability Listservs

Educational Listservs

Educational Listservs by subject

Institute for Literacy

International Adoption

Literary Listservs

Mathematics Archives

Music Listservs

National Academy of Neuropsychology

Nursing Listservs, StFXU

Social Work Listservs - Social Work Access Network (SWAN)

Technology

General PC User Groups - organized by State or province

Microsoft User Groups

Apple User Groups

Linux User Groups

User Group Network

Java User Groups

Perl User Groups