[WEB4LIB] Email reference/web-based email

[Thomas Bennett]

This is not a WEB solution but what I've done is setup a single email
account for our Ask A Librarian email link which is
askref at www.library.appstate.edu .  Most of our librarians use Netscape
Messenger so I just setup a profile  on the staff machines that will be
responding to these requests and on the reference desk machine for the
askref account.

I plan on updating our 'Ask A Librarian' Zope solution to check the askref
email account and put new submissions into the WEB database that the
librarians use to respond to the patron questions.  This will make a one
stop solution for the reference librarians.


Thomas


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Susan Sloan
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 4:16 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Email reference/web-based email


Please excuse a very rudimentary question!

We would like to begin offering an email reference service. I have a form
set up and ready to go and in testing, it seems to work well. I thought all
would be well until the Reference Librarian said he wanted staff to be able
to manage the service from multiple staff PCs within the Reference
Department, instead at just the Reference Desk (duh, makes sense). Now I'm
trying to find a way to offer a web interface to the POP3 account we'll use.
I found something that at least looks good called MollyMail
(http://www.mollymail.com/webmail/) from EmuMail (http://www.emumail.com).
How safe/reliable might this be? I've also been looking at Perl scripts from
the CGI Resource Index
(http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Web_Based_E_Mail/).
Any recommendations? Free is nice but not required.

Thanks for any assistance.

Susan Sloan
Boca Raton Public Library, Florida