Any member of the Cornell community — whether faculty, staff, or student — may establish an e-list, as long as it supports instruction, research, outreach, administration, or other recognized university activities. There is no charge for creating a CIT-hosted e-list or using the CIT list service. (Some units also host lists locally. Contact your local technical support provider.)

Each list must have one “Primary Owner” who bears ultimate responsibility for all aspects of the operation of the list. The primary owner may arrange to share or delegate list owner duties to additional list administrators. This guide is intended for that Primary Owner.

Step 1: Meet the Criteria for E-list Creation

CIT restricts the creation of new e-lists to the following groups and purposes:

• Cornell work-related activity, such as class instruction, research, outreach, and administration
• Student clubs and organizations registered with the Student Activities office
• Alumni related e-lists must be requested by staff of the Office of Alumni Affairs

Other Cornell-related requests not matching these categories will be considered on an individual basis.

Any student-requested list requires the approval of a Cornell faculty or staff member. Any alumni-requested list requires the approval of the Office of Alumni Affairs.

List owners must have a legitimate Cornell NetID.

What to do if your idea for an e-list doesn't seem to meet these criteria? There are many other places you can host an e-list; a simple web search will point you towards up-to-date resources.

Step 2: Decide on Configuration Options

You will need this information to fill out our online form. You may wish to make a note of your decisions so that you can fill out your form (in the next step) appropriately.

Name of E-list

Your list name can be up to 32 characters long and must end in -L (a hyphen and the letter L). It should contain only letters, numbers, hyphens ( - ), and underscores ( _ ), with no spaces.

It does not matter whether you use uppercase or lowercase letters (that is, CIT-ALERT-L is the same as cit-alert-L). Good list names are short but meaningful (for example, discussion-L is too vague and would be rejected; discussion-of-goats-at-Cornell-L is too cumbersome).

Choose the name carefully, because changing to a new list name is difficult and confusing for members. Remember that other groups on campus may have similar lists, so consider including identifiers meaningful to others, like LAW-staff-L or ILR-staff-L.

On these web pages we follow the convention of always using an uppercase "L" at the end of the e-list name. This is simply for clarity; a lowercase "l" can be mistaken for the numeral one ( 1 ), the letter I, or a vertical line ( | ). In communicating with your members, you should probably follow this convention as well.

Purpose of List

Your proposed list must support one of the following areas:

• Academic instruction
• Academic research
• Academic department
• Administrative department
• Library/Collections department
• Physical Education
• Cornell Cooperative Extension
• Outreach/Engagement activity
• Professional
• Student organization
• Alumni
• Other

If you choose Other, you will need to explain the list's purpose. Requests for "other" lists will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

List Administration Information

Name of primary list owner

The Primary List Owner has ultimate responsibility for the list. He or she serves as contact point for issues and problems related to the list, both technical and content.

NetID of primary list owner

List owners must have an active Cornell NetID, and must be monitoring email sent to their netid@cornell.edu address. 

Status of primary owner

Faculty, staff, student, or alumnus.

If the primary owner is a student or an alumnus, you will need to provide the name, NetID, and email address of a list advisor. For students, the advisor must be faculty or a staff member, preferably associated with the organization the list supports. For alumni, the "advisor" must be a staff member of the Alumni Affairs Office.

If the primary owner is staff or faculty, an advisor is not needed.

Unit/Department/Organization this list supports or is sponsored by

If the sponsoring department or organization is listed in the departmental or student organization directory or is registered with Cornell Alumni Affairs, you'll enter that name in the online form. If we can't contact a list administrator, we will contact this unit.

Email addresses of secondary owners (if any)

Secondary owners are optional; you do not need to designate one for your list unless you want to. Secondary owners have full administrative rights to the list, but cannot have the list shut down.

List Characteristics

Who May Become a Member

Open: Anyone can join by visiting the appropriate URL. See how to Subscribe to an E-list.

Private: Simplelists will send all requests to join to the list's administrators, for approval or rejection. Best for a list where members must meet some criteria, such as being enrolled in a particular class.

Closed: The list's administrators must add members manually; any other attempt to join will be rejected. Best for small, private lists, such as administrative lists for departments.

Who May Post

Restricted: The list will accept postings only from members and list administrators. This option is recommended to help prevent unwanted postings to your list.

Announcement: The list will accept postings only from the list administrators, and no one else. Use this option when the purpose of the list is to post periodic announcements rather than to serve as a vehicle for interaction.

Open: Anyone with an email address, even non-members, can post a message by sending it to the list address. This option is generally not recommended, since your list can become a target of unwanted postings such as spam.

Posting Moderation

No: All postings will be distributed, without changes, directly to the list.

Yes: Administrators will have the opportunity to review each message. They then either approve or reject it. If approved, the message will be posted to the list. Best for controlling lists on a narrow range of topics, or where the list owner wants to keep the "noise" level down to a minimum. If rejected, the message will not be distributed to the list. Administrators have the option of providing feedback on why a message was rejected.

Where Replies Go

Sender: When a reader replies to a post, the reply will be addressed to the original sender, not the list. This option helps prevent personal responses from going to the whole list, and is recommended particularly for large lists to avoid mistakes and distribution of unwanted mail. Lists used primarily for announcements should also have this option set. However, a subscriber who wants to reply to the entire list can change the "To" field in his or her email program while composing the reply.

List: When a member replies to a post, the reply will be addressed to the list, not the original sender. This option is best for discussion lists, especially small, informal lists. (However, a member who wants to reply to an individual sender can change the "To" field in his or her email program while composing the reply.)

These options are not foolproof; many email programs can be set up to override them by following a user's preference. Users can also manually re-direct their replies. Remind your members to check the "To" field when replying to a mailing list message.

Resource Requirements

• Standard e-list
• Bulkmail e-list
  • For mailings as described at the Send Email to a List of Addresses via Bulkmail article. 
• More than 10,000 recipients
• Large Messages
  • Accepts emails up to 5000KB in size (Standard e-lists accept up to 970KB).
  • May experience delays of 90 minutes or more.
• Time Sensitive
  • Emails must be very small in size.
  • Primarily for coordinating shift work.
• Special Needs
  • The email team will contact you to discuss.

Step 3: Fill Out the Online Request Form

Now that you've made your choices, you need to fill out and submit an online form requesting your new e-list.

1. Complete the Online E-list Request Form. (You will need to authenticate with your Cornell NetID.)
2. Fill out the form using the options you chose in part two of this guide.
3. Click Submit when finished.

We suggest you save or print a copy of the confirmation web page you see after clicking Submit. Should anything go wrong with the process, this will allow you to reconstruct your choices easily.

A copy of the form will be sent to the Cornell e-list administrative team; they will respond to your request within two business days. (The beginning of each academic term is always very busy, so the response may be slower then.)

Step 4: Announce Your List

After all the steps in parts 1-3 of our guide have been completed, you should encourage people to join your new list. Announce its creation to those who might be interested in it, and give brief instructions on how to join. You can direct people to instructions for managing subscriptions. 

Unless list membership is a requirement (for example, an official departmental list, or a list associated with a particular class), list administrators should not add anyone to the list who has not asked to be a member. It is generally considered bad manners to add people to a list unless they have requested that you do so.

Step 5: Maintain Your List

See the E-Lists (Simplelists) page for articles that outline instructions and responsibilities for you as a list owner.

Lists that are not properly maintained may be suspended or shut down.