The Stumpers-L

electronic mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

, was a resource available for

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time, ...

s and others to discuss reference questions which they were unable to answer using available resources. It was succeeded by the similar Project Wombat.

Origins

Stumpers-L began in 1992, created by Ann Feeney, a

library school Education for librarianship, including for paraprofessional library workers, varies around the world, and has changed over time. In recent decades, many institutions offering librarianship education have changed their names to reflect the shift from ...

graduate student at

Rosary College Dominican University (DU) is a private Roman Catholic university in River Forest, Illinois, affiliated with the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters. It offers bachelor's and master's degrees, certificate programs, and a PhD in information studies. Do ...

in River Forest,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was moved to

Concordia University, Chicago Concordia University Chicago is a private university in River Forest, Illinois. Formerly a college exclusively for parochial teacher education, Concordia-Chicago now offers more than 100 undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and enrolls more t ...

, then back to Rosary, which was then renamed Dominican University. From 2002 to 2005 it was maintained by the Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science program. At the end of 2005 Dominican University ceased hosting the list. A replacement list, known as Project Wombat, commenced in January 2006, and is hosted by

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

. Originally the Stumpers-L archive was a

gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

resource, but it migrated to the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

once the web became more universally used in the mid-1990s.

Topics

Typical Stumpers-L topics include: *"Which words in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

end in -gry?" *"Who wrote '' The Book of Counted Sorrows'', and where can I get a copy?" *"Is there a novel with no letter 'e' in it?" *"Where can I find information on

Kombucha Kombucha (also tea mushroom, tea fungus, or Manchurian mushroom when referring to the culture; Latin name ''Medusomyces gisevii'') is a fermented, lightly effervescent, sweetened black tea drink commonly consumed for its purported health ben ...

/Manchurian Mushroom Tea?" *"If the average

human body The human body is the structure of a Human, human being. It is composed of many different types of Cell (biology), cells that together create Tissue (biology), tissues and subsequently organ systems. They ensure homeostasis and the life, viabi ...

were broken down into its constituent chemicals, how much would they be worth?"

Public notice

A book of Stumpers-L questions and answers was published in 1998 by

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

, edited by

Fred Shapiro Fred Richard Shapiro is an American academic and writer working as the editor of ''The Yale Book of Quotations'', ''The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations'', and several other books. Education Shapiro earned a Bachelor of Science de ...

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

and titled ''Stumpers! Answers to Hundreds of Questions That Stumped The Experts'' (). Shapiro was an active member;Rotella, Carlo. "Can a book of quotations include Cher, MC Hammer, and 'Get a life'? Ask the man who out-Bartletted Bartlett's" ''Yale Alumni Magazine'' September/October 2006
/ref> other prominent members include Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, the co-editors of '' Snopes.com''. The unofficial mascot of the Stumpers-L list is the

wombat Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials that are native to Australia. They are about in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between . All three of the extant species are members of the family Vombatidae. They are adap ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Project Wombat official site About the new Project Wombat site
(Look for the contact link below the names of the list owners/managers) Reference Electronic mailing lists