email in libraries

[Miriam Bobkoff]

OK. I'm _really_ speaking only for myself here.

For me the quintessential internet experience is asking for help on a
listserv and getting the answer I need
     a. within five minutes from a perfect stranger 2000 miles away 
 and b. from six or twenty people over the next couple of days

The analogy that "the library doesn't offer a bank of free telephones" does
not encompass this possibility. 

I have felt that I wanted this experience of global interactivity for our
patrons--most particularly for those of our patrons who don't have their
own machines or any idea what all this internet fuss is about--since the
time I helped a hard-to-help very confused newbie with a very confusing
health problem discover that--alas--the most pertinent information out
there on her condition was via a listserv of fellow sufferers. "Do you have
an email account somewhere?" I asked her, as if I didn't know that of
course she did not, and in fact she probably didn't have any friends that
technologically sophisticated either.

Then we had a text-only connection. Today I would suggest she get a HotMail
account.

I am also grateful down to the tips of my fingers when I'm somewhere far
from home and find a machine I can telnet from to check my mail. Until
there are corner telnet booths as common as corner pay phones, I don't
think this is an irrelevant service either.

Miriam Bobkoff
Santa Fe Public Library
mbobkoff at ci.santa-fe.nm.us