E-mail in libraries

[JQ Johnson]

I was pleased to see the email-restriction can of worms reopened on
web4lib.  It's an important topic.

I think Bill Drew summarizes the anti-email position well:
> It is a question of scarce resources not
> restricting a valuable use of a tool.

Granted, we must make resource allocation decisions all the time.  The
question should be whether this particular decision is based on a correct
understanding of our patrons' needs and/or on mandated institutional
policies.  I also think that Brenda Tyler phrased the response to Bill
(which actually started the current round of discussion, but which nobody
has responded to adequately), when she noted that "e-mail is a legitimate
tool for researchers, students and library patrons."  Absent the kinds of
longstanding traditions that make collection development decisions easy,
how do we decide on the relative merits of allowing e-mail versus, say,
image viewing on a library webstation?

My library, like many, blocks e-mail on webstations outside of
public-access computer labs.  My own biases, though, are that e-mail is in
fact a critically important research tool in a typical academic library, as
well as an instructional tool that we as an institution are encouraging.
How is a student supposed to find the materials for his course if he can't
read the e-mail message his professor sent to her class mailing list with
the revised list of articles?  How does a researcher check that journal
keyword search she just got by email from CARL Uncover?  If we want to
block email but allow web browsing, where do we draw the line given the
increasing availability of http-based email interfaces such as hotmail (on
our own campus, although typical undergrad email boxes are not yet
accessible via web, many people in one college have email through a CCmail
system that DOES allow web-based access, so we have an equity problem).
The problem is particularly accute given rapidly changing technology, where
we expect rapid innovation in information services and in the need to
provide access to new kinds of services.  [I also think that one can do a
very good job of providing equitable access to webstations by putting them
on high counters without chairs, with a big "10 minute limit" sign.  And I
was at least 20% serious in suggesting that instead of blocking email we
turn off image/* viewing or go back to lynx.].

But I'm not convinced that the details of the tradeoffs matter as much as
the process does.  How SHOULD libraries go about making this sort of
resource decision in ways that reflect the library's core values, that
provide input from the affected parties (including patrons, institutional
administration, managers of other computer access facilities elsewhere in
the institution, library techies who often look for "fixes" that are
technically clean to implement, library non-techies who sometimes look for
fixes that are more consistent with yesterday's technology than tomorrow's,
etc.)?

JQ Johnson                      office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  mailto:jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
1299 University of Oregon       phone: 541-346-1746 (v) -3485 (fax)
Eugene, OR  97403-1299          http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/