To: University Faculty and Staff
 
 

From: Marc Eichen

University CIO
 
 

Re: E-mail services and accounts
 
 

In the past several months, a number of faculty and staff have asked The Office of Information Technology for information regarding e-mail: whether the University has an e-mail directory, how can one find e-mail addresses of faculty, staff and students, what e-mail address can be used on University business cards and stationary, how can staff access their e-mail from off campus, etc.

In an effort to answer these questions, the staff of IT has prepared a draft document, answering these questions and outlining the direction we hope to take in the next months regarding increasing access to e-mail. If you wish to get a copy of this document, please contact IT or Academic Computing on your campus. The document is also available on our WWW site: http://www.liu.edu/it.

We look forward to your questions and suggestions regarding these issues.
 
 
 
 
 
 

C: M. Arons

In response to a number of requests for a more integrated electronic mail facility on many campuses, the Office of Information Technology has begun a process which will make it easier to obtain an e-mail account and to use e-mail as both an instructional and business tool throughout the University.

The following memo explains a number of points about the University e-mail directory and how to locate e-mail addresses for other members of the University community and accessing e-mail from off campus.
 
 

What is my E-Mail account?

We're in the process of implementing the following simplified scheme.  Everyone at LIU will have an account.  For example, Eudora Welty teaches English at C. W. Post.  Her account is ewelty@phoenix.liu.edu.  But her formal e-mail address (the one that should be on her card) is:  eudora.welty@liu.edu

Please note the important differences between the account and the formal address.  The account includes some contraction of the first and last name and the actual server or host computer system where her e-mail is stored.  The formal e-mail address, for faculty and staff, is in the form: firstname.lastname@liu..edu  C there is no contraction of first and last name and no reference to the actual host where e-mail is received. Students have formal e-mail accounts in the form: firstname.lastname@campus.liu.edu.  So David Eichen enrolled at Brooklyn has an account: deichen@hornet.liu.edu  and his formal address will be: david.eichen@brooklyn.liu.edu.

We have several reasons to encourage everyone to make the distinction between account and formal e-mail address and to strongly encourage you to use the formal e-mail address in your correspondence, papers, business cards, etc both inside and outside the University community.

Our first (and strongest) reason is convenience.  You no longer need to remember any staff or faculty member=s e-mail address.  You simply have to know their name.  Second, distributing e-mail accounts through return addresses is generally thought to be weak security practice.  Using the formal address hides the actual logon account.  Finally, e-mail accounts change for both technical and administrative reasons.  It may be desirable to move some users from phoenix or titan to another host computer to provide faster access. If Professor Welty=s e-mail account were to change, e-mail addressed specifically to ewelty@phoenix... C will Abounce@ and be returned undelivered.  If however, it is addressed to eudora.welty@liu... C it will be delivered, regardless of where the logon account is actually located.

With this convention, it is unnecessary to maintain a central e-mail directory for the University. To reach a faculty or staff member, all you need to know is his or her name. To reach a student, you just need to know the student’s name and campus.

Several further notes; if you have an existing account, e.g., hmann@hornet.liu.edu, we will set up the alias directory to point to this account. Correspondents will then be able to send e-mail to your formal e-mail address: horace.mann@liu.edu or your e-mail account hmann@hornet.liu.edu. If you do not have an e-mail account we will set a new one up on one of our servers with some concatenation of fist name, last name and a number where there are duplicates.

If your name is "Horace Mann" but everyone knows you as "Bob Mann" we can include two entries in our alias file, one as horace.mann@liu.edu and one as bob.mann@liu.edu.

Finally, let's suppose that Professor Welty is taking a sabbatical teaching English at the University of  Cairo and she needs her e-mail forwarded.  We can set up her existing formal e-mail address (eudora.welty@liu.edu) to forward mail to her temporary e-mail logon:  ewelt1@maadi.eng.cairo.eg  -- so even in this case, her LIU business card, stationary, papers, etc. are correct.
 
 

How long will I keep my e-mail account?

It is our intention to keep e-mail accounts active as long as staff and faculty are members of the LIU community. Students can retain their e-mail accounts as long as they continue to access them. Student accounts will be invalidated if they are not used for one calendar year. Students that graduate may retain an e-mail account on the LIU alumni server as long as they continue to use it. We are developing a policy with respect to alumni accounts and will update the www-based version of this memo as this develops.
 
 

Where is my e-mail stored?

E-mail is sent to servers or hosts such as phoenix.liu.edu where it is stored. An up to date way to receive e-mail is with an e-mail "client" located on an individual workstation or PC (rather than with an e-mail "client" such as Pine that is located on the e-mail host) -- which downloads mail from the host to the workstation. So e-mail is first stored on the server and then downloaded and stored on the individual PC.

The e-mail client is software running on your PC which is "pointed" at the e-mail host where your mail is stored. So, to continue our example, Professor Welty would configure her e-mail client at her account, ewelty@phoenix.liu.edu. Currently, the Office of Information Technology is planning to support the e-mail client within Netscape Communicator, Eudora and a WWW-based client. We will review the clients we support periodically. IT will install Netscape Communicator on University computers and will loan the CD so you may install it on your system off campus at no charge. Several versions of Eudora are available for downloading from the WWW (www.eudora.com), also at no charge.

Appendix A to this memo describes how to configure Netscape Communicator correctly and how to point it at our University e-mail host.

In addition the Netscape Communicator and Eudora, IT plans to make available a WWW based interface for our e-mail systems.  This will enable people away from campus, anywhere where there is a WWW browser to access their email account.  To use this interface, you can point any copy of Netscape or Internet Explorer at our www interface and then follow the directions there to point this to their e-mail account. We expect to have this installed by the early part of the Spring ’99 semester.
 
 

Can I access e-mail from off campus?

Yes – most certainly. Regardless of what Internet Service Provider (ISP) you may be using, such as AOL or IBM.Net; if your ISP provides access to the Internet, you can access your LIU e-mail account. In order to do this, you would use your ISP to establish a connection to the network and then point the e-mail client, such as Eudora or Netscape Communicator on your PC off campus to your LIU e-mail account.

To understand this, the telephone system is a good analogy. Your ISP provides the basic connection to the Internet like your local phone company. You can point your e-mail client at any server in the same way your telephone can dial any number regardless of what phone company is used to connect this number.

Appendix B describes how to configure accounts at IBM.Net and AOL so you may reach your e-mail account at the University.
 
 

How can I find my e-mail account?

In the next several months we will begin to provide everyone within the University community an e-mail account. You will not need to apply for an e-mail account. You will not have to come to Information Technology or Academic Computing to learn what your e-mail account is. We hope to make this available from a button, "Electronic Resources" on the University home page. To learn about your e-mail address, just click on this button and follow the instructions.
 
 

What about finding e-mail addresses for others at the University?

With the firstname.lastname convention, we do not maintain an e-mail directory. As indicated already, to find a faculty or staff member you only need to know their name since their address will be firstname.lastname@liu.edu. To find an e-mail address for a student, you need only know their name and campus since their e-mail address will be firstname.lastname@campus.liu.edu.
 
 

Can I set up e-mail lists, so I can send the same e-mail to several people?

Yes – and there are two ways to do this. If you have an informal list of friends, a list that only you might use, you may put their e-mail addresses into an address book on your workstation. You may then include a list in this address book which includes these address book entries. Netscape and Eudora both have this ability and Appendix C describes how to build this type of local list.

If you are a faculty or staff member and wish to build a list that many people would use to send mail, to all Deans for example, IT will help you build this list. E-mail lists can be closed or open to new subscribers and Appendix D illustrates how to subscribe and unsubscribe to open lists within the LIU community.
 
 

Can we set up a group e-mail account?

Group accounts are very poor security practice and we will be phasing these out. By this, we mean logon accounts which more than one person can logon to. Instead, we will be encouraging the use of formal addresses which can receive and then forward e-mail to any number of accounts and lists which can distribute e-mail. Using formal addresses, members of a club, such as the Chess club at Southampton could each receive mail addressed to chess@southampton.liu.edu. And with a list called, chess-l@southampton.liu.edu members can send mail to the entire club as well as students that are not members but who are interested and have subscribed to the list.
 
 

In closing we, in the Office of Information Technology, want to suggest that e-mail is not the most glamorous service on the Interent. Homepages on the Web, with multimedia, video and real-time interactivity are like champagne – glamorous, alluring, evanescent, sparkling. E-mail, however, is the bread and butter. We look forward to and commit ourselves to delivering the mail.
 
 
 
 

Appendices:

A E-mail Client Configurations: Eudora, Netscape Communicator, WWW

B AOL and IBM.Net Configurations

C How to Building Distribution Lists in Eudora & Netscape Communicator

D How to Subscribe and Unsubscribe to Mailing Lists