Director of technology for the Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park, New York.
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for January 2000
The way some start-up dot-com sites act, you would think they invented e-mail reference services (sometimes known as “ask-a” services, as in “Ask a Librarian”). Yet e-mail reference has been around for as long as libraries have had e-mail addresses and patrons could find them. The longevity prize goes to the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida/Gainesville, which first initiated an e-mail reference service in the fall of 1989; but many other libraries began these services in the last four or five years and have been quietly providing good service ever since.
In a future column I’ll compare library and commercial e-mail reference (Surprise! We’re better at it); but this one just tells you how to get started. You don’t want to be the Last Library on Earth to offer this service, do you?
E-mail reference is one of those rare services that seem to provide very satisfying results for a relatively small commitment of time and labor. “I have gotten quite a few questions that were sent in the middle of the night—they don’t get answered until the next morning, but they get to ask them when they think of them,” noted Laura Speer of the Central Rappahannock (Va.) Regional Library.
“E-mail time” is also more leisurely than either walk-in or telephone time; although I’ve startled patrons by sending immediate replies, usually libraries specify 24 to 48 hours, and patrons seem happy with that. What you miss in the facial expressions of the in-person reference interview is more than made up by the ability to repeat the text of the patron’s question in your answer, send attachments, and amaze patrons by responding to questions at odd hours (a trick reserved for us junkies tethered to e-mail 24 hours a day).
E-mail reference is also useful for distance-ed students; as Thomas Bennett of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, noted, e-mail “affords the patron a response from a librarian without having to call long distance on the phone.”
Peter Jorgensen of the Lincoln City (Nebr.) Libraries noted that e-mail reference is particularly suited toward “hard-to-find local information”—a service your far-flung virtual patrons will appreciate, and that public libraries are ideally suited to deliver. If the request involves history or genealogy, the asker may well be related to someone in your tax district.
If you’re worried that you will be swamped with requests via e-mail, no library reported receiving more reference questions than it could handle, and most reported very modest traffic—several dozen questions a month. I would prefer online reference to telephone reference any day: E-mail is a more leisurely time frame that doesn’t force you to choose between walk-in traffic and the voice on the phone.
If you’re getting a disproportionate number of out-of-area requests, look at your marketing methods. Mark Schumacher said the University of North Carolina/Greensboro’s Jackson Library eliminated many “off-the-wall” questions when they “reduced the meta-tags [in their Web pages] and added a disclaimer about aiming our service to UNCG patrons.”
Several librarians reported that they actually enjoyed the out-of-area questions—particularly those that were based on misconceptions. Ed Murray, director of the New London (Ct.) Public Library, told me, “Once we were mistaken for the London Public Library of the U.K., but it was a general reference question that we handled!” Linda Rees of Reagan County Library in Big Lake, Texas, reported that “one request had us confused with the Reagan Presidential Library where George W. Bush gave a speech. They wanted a copy of the speech,” which the librarians quickly found on the Bush Web site.
Bernie Sloan at the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign maintains a list of dozens of libraries that provide e-mail reference—a great way to shop around for models that suit your needs. Two books to help you map out your services are Rethinking Reference by Elizabeth Thomsen (Neal Schuman, 1999) and the AskA Starter Kit, by R. Lankes (ERIC Clearinghouse, 1998).
My one criticism of most library e-ref is that we tend to hide our light under a bushel. Of over 30 librarians that responded, almost all said that the primary publicity tool was a simple link from their library Web page. Yet many people won’t think of a library Web site when they have a question.
To help spiff up your marketing campaign, Stephanie Stokes has created some e-ref clip art on her ever-useful Library Media & PR Web site, including the exceedingly cute “Life Is Just a Bowl of Queries.” “We also have bookmarks and talk about it in instruction sessions,” reported Ann Bristow, head of reference at Indiana University Libraries. I’d like to see e-ref mentioned in that national advertising campaign ALA keeps hinting about. (E-Service with a Smile from Those Nice Ladies with the Tight Buns?) But don’t wait for ALA—The time for this service was yesterday!