Why don't people use e-mail reference?
Sloan, Bernie
(NOTE: If your library has e-mail reference statistics to share, I'd
appreciate getting them).
Over the past two months I've been gathering statistics on e-mail
reference, posting several requests to several listservs. While I haven't
received a high enough response rate to do anything that's statistically
significant (I've received responses from eighteen libraries), the responses
do seem to indicate that people only infrequently use e-mail to submit
reference questions.
Of the 18 libraries providing data, well over half (11) averaged less than
one question per day. Four more libraries averaged between 1 and
2 questions per day. Two libraries averaged 2 to 3 questions per day.
Indiana University seems to be the exception to the rule, averaging
about 20 transactions per day. In other words, 95% of the libraries
in my admittedly small sample averaged fewer than 3 transactions
per day, with over half averaging less than 1 transaction per day.
The infrequency of e-mail reference questions is perhaps better
illustrated by representing e-mail questions as a percentage of
total reference questions recorded. Five of the 18 libraries
(3 public and 2 academic) provided me with data for total face-to-face,
telephone, and e-mail transactions. For the three public libraries,
face-to-face questions accounted for 76.03% of total reference
questions, telephone reference services accounted for 23.6%, and
e-mail accounted for only 0.37% of the total! For the two academic
libraries, face-to-face accounted for 87.51%, telephone reference
accounted for 12.03%, and e-mail accounted for only 0.47%.
So, once again giving the caveat that this is a small, self-selected
sample, my question is: Why don't people use e-mail reference
more frequently? With millions of people surfing the Web, and
millions of people with e-mail accounts, and internet commerce
logging billions of dollars in sales, etc., why does e-mail reference
seem to account for less than one-half of one percent of total
reference questions?
I'm interested to hear what people think...
Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
University of Illinois Office for Planning & Budgeting
338 Henry Administration Building
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax: (217) 333-6355
Email: ber...@uillinois.edu
Gary Klein (bear-at-heart)
On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Bernie Sloan <ber...@uillinois.edu> wrote:
> millions of people with e-mail accounts, and internet commerce
> logging billions of dollars in sales, etc., why does e-mail reference
> seem to account for less than one-half of one percent of total
> reference questions?
>
> I'm interested to hear what people think...
In the 40 months that I have worked at Willamette University, I can
tell you that EVERY SINGLE web page we have created underneath the
Hatfield Library's main web page has a link to our email address. If we
get 2 legitimate reference questions per day by email, that is a lot!
EMAIL MAY BE FAST, but it is not a dynamic form of communication!
As the editor of an email list for librarians, I am online reading my email
at least 8 times per business day. But many librarians (whether
academic or public) cannot retreive their email so readily, so often
throughout the day, from anywhere within their organization.
When you use email, you cannot see body language when they ask a
question. The requester cannot display their exasperation with the
sources that they have tried (in vain) so far.
As the librarian, you cannot see the teacher's name nor the course
number on a student's assignment sheets. In person, you might recognize
that this person was just seen going up & down the journal stacks
for the past hour when in fact what they are looking for, is only in
books, microfilm, or just on another floor!
There is no dynamic interaction with email. You send me a question,
and then an hour or so later, I try to send you a response.
I have seen both faculty & students who cannot provide a frame to
describe what they are looking for. Librarians are very familiar with THE
REFERENCE INTERVIEW PROFESS, but the people who ask for our help do not
know it by that name. Instead, we sometimes cope with cryptic notes such
as "How to find the book reviews by using library webpage?"
On our campus, we have some politics and history classes where
students are required to look for book reviews that are more than 20 years
old... not too many databases are going to be helpful for those students.
And our web page that talks about book reviews simply cannot cover every
type of book reviewing source that we own. So I can tell this email
questioner where to find our web page on book reviewing sources, but that
may not be appropriate for the history of US government class.
When people have problems with an electronic resource, they often
times find their computer locking up. Obviously, those sorts of problems
are more network, software, or machine based. Think about it for a
second, if your computer keeps freezing up, what is the likelihood that
you would FEEL COMFORTABLE using that same XX!!&&XX machine, to ask
someone for help?
If you need immediate help, are you honestly going to re-boot your
computer for the Nth time, struggle to get a phone connection, and use
your word processor to compose an email message call for help?
And with your machine locking up so much, how is the person in need
of help, going to get your answer?
If they do not offer you a phone number, or their phone number is a
long distance call, are you going to reply via email, or will you eat the
cost of the phone call (at those higher, daytime rates)?
In my experience, people who are good communicators, do not like
relying on email, because it just is slow, in getting the job done.
From home, many people do not have fully functional computers with
WAN or LAN access, so they often times cannot have their email up on one
screen, the library database on the other, while running word processing,
and also have another screen open to your online help system.
According to the manuals, I am supposed to be able to do that at
home, with my 586 machine, connecting to America Online. But with the
word processor also running, I cannot keep juggling all those tasks
without a lock-up, at least once every 30 minutes.
Oh, did I mention that the dial-up connections to our campus computer
center are always busy weeknights and on Sundays after 2pm?
Ooops, my door bell is ringing, looks like I have to run away to
answer that, and now the 10 minute inactivity timer is about to kick, so
I might not be able to finish composing thissssssss.................
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
GARY KLEIN, volunteering as Editor of BUSLIB-L
BUSLIB-L's FAQ = http://www.willamette.edu/~gklein/buslib.htm
Management & Economics Librarian
Hatfield Library / Willamette University / Salem, OR 97301 USA
gkl...@willamette.edu work #503-370-6743 http://members.aol.com/tethered