Thanks Ross for bringing this out. I plan to write a book review of Widdy Ho's edited collection for the EH.NET's Book Review. We owe Larry so much in many different ways. Thanks for sharing this.
Best,
Ric Holt

>>> "Ross B. Emmett" <[log in to unmask]> 05/13/10 3:15 PM >>>
My receipt of the recent memorial volume for Larry Moss reminded me that I
had planned to write a message to the list regarding Larry's involvement in
the establishment of the original HES list. The memorial volume (Laurence S.
Moss, 1944-2009), edited by Larry's widow Widdy Ho, collects the
remembrances of Larry that were presented at the HES meeting last June, as
well as a number of other essays.

I arrived at the June 1994 HES meeting at Babson College ready to make a
general announcement regarding the existence of an email distribution list
for historians of economics that I had set up just before the meeting on my
university's email server. Personal invites had gone out to several people
before the meeting, but I wanted to ask Larry, who had organized the 1994
meeting and would be running the Society's business meeting as its incoming
President, if I could make an announcement about the list's existence and
how to join. [By the way, Evelyn Forget, now co-editor of JHET, has the
honor of the first substantive posting to the list which preceded SHOE,
although unfortunately, my university's email server did not provide
archiving, so the first messages have disappeared.]

The first night of the Babson HES conference, while walking around the
opening reception, Larry Moss and Paul Wendt came over to talk about a
Usenet forum that Paul had suggested starting. Larry right away had seen the
potential for scholarly communication provided by opportunities like Usenet
and email, and had heard that I also was starting something. We spent the
next several days at Babson discussing the various options in between
sessions. From the start, Larry saw the wisdom in having the service
coordinated by the History of Economics Society, and he urged Paul and I to
collaborate on setting up a service for the Society. He also pointed out
that the Babson College server provided the opportunity for messages to be
archived.

With Larry's assistance, Paul and I combined our efforts, focused on a
single service, which would be a continuation of my email distribution list,
and planned to move the administration of the list to the Babson server. I
delayed a general announcement of the list until we had things settled. By
that time, Larry and I had both been invited to attend the first European
Conference on the History of Economics (ECHE) in Rotterdam in February 1995.
We decided that, even though the list was up and running, we would make the
ECHE conference the official launch of the list, which we had decided to
name HES, because it was now under the auspices of the History of Economics
Society (my own original list bore the name HISECON -- I suppose it's a good
thing that that name didn't stick).

Larry's enthusiasm for the potential scholarly discussion that an email list
provided the history of economics diaspora was matched only by the energy he
expended on its organization and promotion. I'm sure he enjoyed the
spontaneity of the discussions that emerged; he was a frequent early
contributor. One of his last acts as President of the Society was the
creation of the Manager of Electronic Resources position on the Society's
executive committee, with oversight of the email list and the Society's
website. In the first few years of the list, I occupied that position, with
an editorial team that included Paul Wendt, Humberto Barreto (who is now the
Society's Manager of Electronic Resources), and Esther Miriam-Sent.

To bring the story of the list's creation full circle: when we were
discussing possible university homes for the original list, Avi Cohen
suggested the York University servers. At the time, Larry wanted to host the
list at Babson, and I was interested in the emerging Eh.Net services.
Problems with Babson's servers led us to move the HES List to Eh.Net a year
later, in February 1996. Eh.Net hosted their services first at Miami
University (Ohio) and then at Wake Forest University. When the HES list
morphed into the SHOE list to reflect its representation of several
societies for historians of economics, a decision was made to move to York's
servers, which remain to this day the list's server home. Maybe Larry and I
should have listened to Avi the first time!

Many of you may not be aware of the fact that the SHOE list is one of the
most successful scholarly email distribution lists, with a history of
continuous messages at a rate of roughly a message a day over the past 15
years. Most email lists have an early flurry of activity, which eventually
slows down and the list is shut down within a couple of years. Not so with
our list! While the primary reason for its success has been the commitment
of historians of economics to the list, the fact that it has always been run
under the auspices of scholarly history of economic societies has
significantly contributed to that success as well. That we owe to Larry's
leadership.

Ross Emmett