Abstract

This article reviews the activities of the Humanities and Arts Higher Education Network in the UK, and the role of its newsletter HAN News in helping to establish and maintain the network. The article also looks at the origins of our current understanding of networks and networking, and locates the HAN network in the space between purposive networks that are supported by large inputs of outside resources, and those that are ‘natural’ and require little or no inputs of energy, such as family and friendship groups. It points out that without such resource and energy inputs, entropy soon overwhelms a purposive network, thus pointing to the key role played in voluntary networks by a central ‘maintaining’ group. From 2003 onwards the HAN network will largely operate via electronic means, rather than relying on printed media and face-toface events–it will become a virtual network