COMPUTING NEWS  December 1993  Volume 5 Number 4
   A Publication of Columbia University  Academic Information Systems

   BE YOUR OWN PUBLISHER: THE STORY OF THE JEWISH ELECTRONIC CALENDAR

                 By Meir Israel Green, [email protected]

      The Jewish Electronic Calendar (JEC) is a free weekly schedule of 
      events and announcements relevant to the Columbia Jewish 
      community.

      After experiencing frustration at being unable to remember all of 
      the events announced each week at Shabbat services and finding the 
      information unavailable when I was off-campus or when the Jewish 
      Student Union (JSU) office was closed, I published the first 
      Jewish Electronic Calendar (JEC) on October 8, 1992.

      Since then, the JEC has been published over 30 times, and each 
      issue still includes an edited version of the week's JSU (Jewish 
      Student Union) Shabbat announcements. Approximately 100 people 
      receive the JEC directly via e-mail (to be on this mailing list 
      send a request to [email protected]); additional people read it on 
      ColumbiaNet or on a notesfile accessible by typing "notes jewish" 
      at the CUNIX prompt.

      In this on-line mode, the JEC
      * Notifies people of events that are not widely publicized or are 
        organized quickly.
      * Informs those who live off-campus.
      * Brings in people who have not been affiliated with the Jewish 
        community.
      * Reminds people of traditional Jewish calendar events, such as 
        Shabbat, Festivals, and days of mourning.
      * Increases the communication between Jewish communities within 
        Columbia (the JSU is an umbrella organization comprising over 
        twenty groups on campus) and other Jewish communities within New 
        York City and the rest of the world.
      * Makes people aware of larger Jewish networking resources and how 
        to access them, such as NYSERNet (gopher nysernet.org), which 
        includes the NY-Israel project, and Jerusalem1 (gopher 
        jerusalem1.dataserv.co.il).

      The availability AcIS computer systems, which are a part of the 
      larger global information network known as the Internet, allows 
      the JEC to be quickly assembled, edited, and published for free by 
      one person, as a public service, and entirely without funding.