[WEB4LIB] Why don't people use e-mail reference?

[Bill Drew]

Perhaps you need to turn the question around and ask WHY WOULD ANYONE USE
E-MAIL FOR REFERENCE?  It involves waiting for a response that you don't
know when it will arrive.  There is no real personal interaction.  We supply
a link for reference questions but get very few.

Bill Drew
drewwe at morrisville.edu

> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Sloan, Bernie
> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 7:34 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Why don't people use e-mail reference?
>
>
>
> (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
>
>