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SHAKSPER, now in its nineteenth year, is an international "electronic seminar"1 that enables ongoing discussion of all things Shakespearean. Technically an email distribution list, it uses L-Soft's LISTSERV ® software to deliver, archive, and manage its digests. In addition, the SHAKSPER web site2 makes all the list's archived materials readily accessible over the Internet.3 The membership currently includes more than 1 ,200 SHAKSPEReans from sixty-five coun- tries.4 Shakespearean textual scholars and bibliographers, editors and critics are mem- bers, but so are university, college, and com- munity-college professors, high-school teachers, undergraduates and graduates, actors, theatre professionals, authors, poets, playwrights, librarians, computer scientists, lawyers, doctors, retirees, and other interested participants. SHAKSPER strives to focus on the scholarly by offering the opportunity for the formal exchange of ideas through queries and responses regarding literary, critical, textual, theoretical, and performative topics and issues. Announcements of conferences, of calls for papers, of seminars, of lectures, of symposia, of job openings, of the publication of books, of the availability of online and print articles, of Internet databases and resources, of journal contents, and of performances and festivals are regular features as are reviews of scholarly books, of past and present theatrical productions, and of Shakespeare and Shakespeare-inspired films as well as citations and discussions of "popular" culture references to Shakespeare and his works. Further, SHAKSPER provides occasion for spontaneous informal discussion, eavesdropping (known as lurking), peer review, and a sense of belonging to a worldwide scholarly community.5
On May 14, 1987, Willard McCarty, then of the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at the University of Toronto, founded HUMANIST as "a Bitnet/NetNorth electronic mail network for people who support computing in the humanities"6 to "foster discussion of basic problems and exchange of information among humanists world-wide, thus aiding research and strengthening the community."7 HUMANIST was the prototype for all academic email distribution lists and continues to this day under McCarty s able editorship. Kenneth Steele, then a graduate student at the University of Toronto, inspired by HUMANIST, decided to found a similar list dedicated to Shakespeare. The name he chose was SHAKSPER; at the time, for technical reasons, list names could be no longer than eight characters. On July 26, 1990, Steele's dream became reality.8
I had met Ken Steele at...