Excel has a Proper() function that will convert text so each word has an initial cap. PROPER(“SCOTT MOSS”) produces “Scott Moss”. Applying it to a few thousand rows, then copying and Paste Special/Value would take a few dozen seconds.

Apparently the AALS is not spending their income on Excel geeks.

I can best Mr. Grimmelmann’s solution by about 1 hour and 58 minutes. (Though his solution sounds like more fun…) You can split the name column into two very easily in Excel. First insert a blank column after the column you want to split. Then go to Data > Text to columns… and follow the directions.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy fix for the all-CAPS names. Maybe a macro would do it, but I’m not that smart.

By the way, how much do they charge for the list? I smell a business opportunity here.

The proposed recent “Do not mail” is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing – and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?

I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!

The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today’s [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman’s mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer’s right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.

To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”

We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.

http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html

Signed,

Ramsey A Fahel

FWIW, these problems are easily fixable in Excel. You can split columns that contain spaces and you can change formats from all-caps to title or sentence case.

This allowed us to avoid the formatting problem and, of course, the high costs of getting lists directly from AALS. From what I can tell, our gathering process worked out pretty well.

Perhaps, this is the future for both people sending their reprints to colleagues (I have never purchased a list from AALS for this purpose), but also for Sections that want to communicate with their members about Section events (although on this last point, it seems that we are moving towards depending more on email lists, listservs, and blogs for these purposes).

Actually, now that I think about it, more professors are using email to at least determine whether they should send a .pdf file of their lastest piece to their colleagues, rather than rely on the old snail mail, reprint route.

All that being said, I think it would be worthwhile for AALS to update and re-format their mailing lists, and reduce the charges for providing such lists, so that professors who do want to continue using this route for sending reprints do not have unncessary obstacles placed in their way.