On Fri, 23 May 2008, Dyer, Renata wrote:

> I am keen on finding out whether there are libraries out there that have
> developed a good way to manage email alerts your library is subscribed
> to.
>
> Our library is subscribed to around 130 email alerts that are delivered
> to our inbox.  Many of these emails need to be actioned in different
> ways.  In some cases, a  staff member needs to save an electronic file
> and add it to the collection. In other cases,  an email  is  generated
> and forwarded to the group of clients. There are lots of small steps
> involved in managing each one of those alerts and the whole area has
> become quite challenging to manage over the time.

[trimmed]

> Do you use a system/software to manage these alerts? Or just to manage
> the distribution list if required? If no, do you know of any (preferably
> open source) that can do the job?
>
> I appreciate any experience you may be willing to share.

I don't have your exact situation, but as a sytem administrator, I make
heavy use of procmail filters to sort and process my incoming e-mail.

        http://www.procmail.org/

I've used it over the years for filtering spam, sorting mailing lists to
separate folders, updating web pages via e-mail.  Procmail can pass
messages off to other programs for processing (eg, 'formail', which is
used to re-write mail headers).

If your mail server is a unix-varient or linux, and you're not using
procmail as your local mail delivery agent, you can always add:

        "|/path/to/procmail -f-"

in your .forward to make use of it.

If you're running a Windows varient for a mail server, or don't have
access to the mail server to install filters ... I'd probably try using
fetchmail to pull the mail to a server where I could then reprocess it.

-----
Joe Hourcle
Principal Software Engineer
Solar Data Analysis Center
Goddard Space Flight Center