EAO: 31st December 2007 -- austraLasia wishes all
readers all God's blessings for 2008. And now for a brief look at 2007,
and what the future holds.
With this final edition for 2007, the total number
of austraLasia
items for the year comes to 295. That is the maximum number in
any single year in the ten year existence of austraLasia and
probably represents the highest number that could be expected in any
one year.
For most of the mailing groups involved (named after
provinces, plus an 'eaogeneral', an 'sdbgeneral' and a 'sasia' group),
that number represents around 25-30 items touching on their province,
or on an EAO or SDB general theme. Some provinces had a few more,
some a little less - and the South Asia group had far fewer items
addressed to them this year because their own regional news system,
BIS, has 'come of age' fully, and there is little point in duplicating
effort - though a large number from that region still receive austraLasia to
keep in touch with what is happening in our region.
The existence of a significant number of
correspondents (upward of 40) in the region has been the most pleasing
factor of all - not only have the 'old' ones hung in, but a number of
interesting developments have taken place amongst which I nominate two:
the increase in correspondents from other groups in the Salesian Family
besides SDBs, and the number of young correspondents from initial
formation. Both factors augur well for the future.
Two major milestones were passed this year: the 10th
birthday of austraLasia
in October, and, more recently, the 2000th edition.
Two significant technical developments have taken
place this year: austraLasia
can now be found - all of it - on Salesian Digital Library (SDL). This
enables extensive search possibilities and long-term conservation of
the region's story as represented by those news items. The second
development is but a day or two old - the transformation of Bosconet
into a Content Management System, but it owes its existence to a year's
trial of a wiki austraLasia comment page which many contributed to -
and can continue to do so. The CMS development has immediate
implications for austraLasia.
For the moment, the '2007' link refers to the old
Bosconet 2007 page. From tomorrow, 1st January, austraLasia will
reside directly inside the new Bosconet-wiki. You may notice very
few changes externally - perhaps just the addition of some metadata
tags at the bottom of a news item to help with classification, and a
different way of accessing the items online. We will stay with the
email distribution, since that is what seems to satisfy the readers.
For those who use RSS to receive austraLasia there will be an
adjustment of address but you will be informed of that in the near
future, and it would be sufficient to click on the new link when it
appears, for your browser to begin collecting from it.
Finally - there is now a public Forum available on
Bosconet, and it may be able to replace the austraLasia comment
page. The Forum only went up today and may need some tinkering with
before it works properly. _________________ AustraLasia is an
email
service
for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions
as an
agency for ANS based in
Rome.
For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com
.
Use Bosconet-wiki
to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital
Library
at at http://sdl.sdb.org
