Don't I sound as though I know how to work them when I say to you 'go to the archives and find my old posts on the 'book list.....' I don't!! now - others do (I think) - and they always say check out the archives....and so.... I'm a sheep - <g> but it makes life so simple.......... only there's loads of people asking me about how to access the archives..... and I can only tell you what I try myself - and I'm one of these people who when driving a car knows how to get from A to B - but if you ask me about any where in the middle or to name the streets on the route I take......I'll sit there with my mouth open as if trying to catch flies. I just do something automatically - and if I stop to think......I get lost! Right - Rootsweb have archived past posts to lists.... Threaded Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ and today they are saying: There are 12,218(!) mailing lists being archived here. As of midnight, there were 2,145,678 available messages in 18,199,410,205 searchable bytes of data and then there is this one Interactive search of mailing lists: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl and they say: This is an interface to the archives for most of the RootsWeb mailing lists, current through the past day or so. Now I have to work out how these work :-( So - if I key in Ireland-L in the threaded archive page - which is one newsgroup I post to - I get a list of refs or whatever.....the first says that it is an index of Ireland-L.......and something about August....... So, I click that one..and then I get......... a page which asks me for my username and password........and I've keyed in those assuming that they are what I always use for most places.....(once upon a time - not too long ago) I went to the rootsweb maiun page and followed whatever to where-ever and did the username an password bit and I get another page - a search page......for the newsgroup.and I key in Book list and I'm there all right - but as my old e mail address - not Jlyons1 but jayohbee and golly.......everyone's coming up but me and my recent posts on 'Book Lists' So - Anyone from any list who hasn't got a clue what my book lists are about (and wants to know) - mail me please, put book list in your subject line and I'll just forward you the first two mails I sent out in Novemeber. Those of you who have already asked me about those posts.......I'll get to your messages and send you the mails....... and LISTOWNERS..........sorry for shouting.. Do you think there is any way that the subscribers on your lists could not just be pointed in the direction of the Archives - but told how the archives work - on a regular basis........plain, simple English pretty please........ I mean - I'm always told things (by friends) like I go to Galway to get to Cork - meaning I take the long way round to do something.maybe, there's an easier way to go through the archives and I don't know what it is and neither do many others. Jane