Monday, November 12, 2007

This school really needs to learn digital document management skillz

I'm really getting tired of mass mails that include PDF scans of documents that are mostly textual and would translate to just a text mail just fine. Okay, so maybe this copy has some university letterhead, or the signature of some official, but it's not significant to the message. Just sent it text. Try to make information more usable, not less.

And for that matter, why email your 1.1 meg PDF in the first place? We have websites, we have wikis, we have RSS feeds, we have discussion boards, etc. Post it somewhere and send a pointer (or don't send the pointer. Assume anyone who cares is already reading the news source you post it to, and the rest of us never cared in the first place.)

Email is not a direct translation to campus paper mail. You need to use the technology better. This would have been acceptable 10 years ago, but not anymore.