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: bernies at uillinois.edu