Academic reference service over e-mail: An update By Ann Bristow and Mary Buechley Report on a successful program at Indiana University The experience of Indiana University, Bloomington, in offering an e‑mail reference service was described in this magazine in 1992. These remarks report on our subsequent experience and make some observations (and raise some questions) about where we go from here. Indiana University (IU) began offering electronic reference service in 1987 as part of the libraries' component of an electronic "Academic Information Environment." As described in the 1992 article, from May through July 1991 the Main Library Reference Department experienced a volume of 330 questions and replies. From September through November 1994 the comparable number was 828. These are some of the busiest months for the Reference Department and the 1991 period was a lighter time of the academic year so the increase is considerable but not quite as great as the number alone might suggest. There were a total of 242 users, increased from 51 in the three months of 1991. All user categories more than doubled, but the largest increase was from graduate students (from 14 users in 1991 to 111 in 1994). The number of transactions also increased somewhat by the growing practice of using our LIBREF address to follow up with patrons who initially approached us in person or by telephone. It is simpler and surer to follow through on the promise to "get back to you" when freed from the need to try to locate the individual by phone, rarely finding anyone "home." The types of questions asked remained fairly constant: bibliographic citations and addresses (of journals, institutions, publishers, and individuals) were the largest number, but most every type of reference inquiry is represented. We continue to receive many expressions of appreciation, 65 during that three‑month period of 1994. These are often more than a simple "thanks"; frequently they may contain another question, since we have proved our ability and usefulness. Often they will comment on the service in general: "what a great service this is!" We try to be sure these comments are forwarded to the individual staff member who handled the question. In the 1992 article, one of the useful tips suggested was: "include a description of service parameters (what kind of questions can I use this service for?)." The text we offered, in following our own advice, is restrained by a system space limitation and reads: Use this option to ask any question you might ask at a library reference desk: checking an incomplete citation, a historical fact, news from yesterday's New York Times -- or biographical information. Requests for long lists are not appropriate. You should receive a reply within twenty‑four hours. Our rule of thumb is that anything over three items is a "list," but the use of that guideline, as in all reference work, involves the exercise of judgment. The problem area this statement is attempting to address is a familiar one from the telephone also: the individual who has continuing responsibility for the collection of a large amount of information. Often this is a staff member or student employee working for a department or a journal. Our policy statement did not help us much with one very difficult encounter with the book review editor of a journal. One difficult encounter in several years of service, however, strikes us as not too bad. In the 1992 article, a survey sent to our clientele was described. To complement that picture, in 1994 we sent a brief questionnaire to our colleagues in the Reference Department at Indiana, asking them a few questions and including a request to rank their preference in ways of receiving reference requests (in person, by telephone, by e‑mail). All the respondents chose "in person" as their first preference; preference for e‑mail or telephone was equally divided for second place, though one staff member observed that "a high volume of phone inquiries is very disruptive and anything that can be done to lessen it is desirable." One objection to e‑mail was the time and effort involved in writing a complex response instead of conveying it orally; the same person observed, however, "you may be able to give it [a question sent over e‑mail] some uninterrupted thought." There was agreement among the staff that volume had not been a problem. One staff member stated that "providing public services electronically has become a part of our everyday worklife. It is inexpensive, useful, and not unpleasant." Staff also agreed that an anticipated inability to query the questioner had not been much of a problem and observed that requests for clarification and amplification generally are well received. One commented that "it seems many people who use this service are experienced library users who have a sense of the kind of question that doesn't require much of an interview; it's very convenient for them to send us this kind of question rather than going to the trouble of trying to reach us by phone." It may also be particularly helpful, he continued, for those "too shy or too proud to ask for help in person." The continuing growth in the use of the service and the consensus among those who offer it that it is useful, lead us to want to continue and improve the service. We face some immediate challenges. Where do we go from here? The local network context. The first recommendation made in the earlier report was that "in order for the service to be generally useful, it must be part of a larger electronic framework: a campus information system, an option within the online catalog, etc. Simply announcing an e‑mail address in a printed campus newsletter and waiting for business will not succeed." The first part of this statement ("it must be part of a larger electronic framework") appears to us now to be even more accurate than we realized when it was first written. It is increasingly evident to us that the growth in the use of this service was directly linked to campus computing decisions over which we have no control. Since the mid‑1980s we have benefited from a centralized system which offered both e‑mail and menu‑driven information services to every faculty member, student, and staff member within the same framework and with a common interface ("the Academic Information Environment"). The move to distributed computing has accelerated on our campus dramatically in the 1994/95 year. The result is that we will increasingly deal with users coming from many points, not one community using one common framework. The "Academic Information Environment"‑- a VAX‑based menu system of information, services (including "Ask a Librarian" and forms for several requests including ILL), and database connections -‑ was taken down completely in May 1995. The dismissive tone of the second part of that statement ("simply announcing an e‑mail address in a printed campus newsletter and waiting for business is not likely to succeed") seems much less defensible now. In a distributed computing environment, any and every opportunity to promote awareness of your service and your network name must be pursued. It helps, of course, if your name is easy to remember (REFERENCE, LIBRARY, LIBREF); that will not be possible to elect in all settings. What is possible, and necessary, is to include your network name everywhere you mention your service, repeatedly, in print, on your telephone answering machine -‑ anywhere and everywhere. World Wide Web. This will be our new basic structure for the delivery of campus (and worldwide) information services. The strengths and challenges of this delivery mechanism are being discussed across the world. We are trying to move promptly to make sure that we are positioned to continue to provide within this framework what we believe is a service of demonstrated usefulness. A colleague in our department has developed a "homepage" for our department and a "form" to send a reference question. We have little experience to recount yet as our homepage is not yet part of a larger campus framework which is broadly used. The little experience we do have points to what will likely remain a challenge: neither the gopher nor the Web environments offer us the opportunity to identify our own affiliated users as our older system did. The user is not identified routinely and securely by the system as the message is sent. Our form asks the person to give us her electronic address and her own name (if she wishes). If users do not wish to, or if they make mistakes in typing, or if they mislead us intentionally, or if they don't know their own full addresses, whatever the scenario (some probably unlikely, others all too likely), a new variable is introduced which makes policy considerations more prominent than they were earlier. Policy questions. Wbom do we serve? Like most reference librarians, our desire is to offer our services with as few restrictions as we can. For us in Bloomington the environment has seemed close to ideal. We are the thirteenth largest research library in the United States, but we are handy only to our own clientele and to the small town of which we are a large part. The users of our electronic service were identified as eligible for our services by having logged into our campus network. We have had to make very few restrictions; our doors, of all descriptions, have been open. A remote user of our e-mail reference service identified the problem, though she did not appear to recognize it. When we answered the e‑mail query she put to us from a remote address (i.e., not from INDIANA.EDU), in a typical compromise, we accompanied our answer with an explanation that this service is "really intended" only for our own students. She replied in the voice of an indignant citizen of the state of Indiana and pointed out that we had never asked what her status was when she called us long distance on the telephone; but that, she added, “costs me money and this is free." That is a succinct statement of the dilemma. We were always puzzled and amused when someone from Los Angeles would call us for the address of Time magazine. But those calls were few, because they "cost [the caller] money." For most people likely to seek our services, and for those of us offering services, life on the Internet is different. When we read of a library explaining its willingness to offer reference service to the world, we wonder how much thought has gone into that offer. Our very imperfect policy statement on the Web is modeled on our approach to written reference correspondence and states: Who may use this service? This service is intended for the students, faculty, and staff of Indiana University, Bloomington. If you are not affiliated with IUB, we are sorry that we can reply to your inquiry only if it concerns Indiana University or some unique resource of the Indiana University Libraries. In the world of written correspondence, we could, in relatively good faith, reply to the occasional fifth grade student on the Gulf coast requesting help on his term paper on President Lincoln that he should visit his nearest public library. This response always leaves one a bit uneasy, not knowing local circumstances. Unhappily, we think we know enough of local circumstances in much of the rest of the world to make such a suggestion offered in reply to questions put to us over the Internet purely hypocritical. Our policy statements will refrain from telling others what they should do; we will try to explain as clearly as we can only what we can do and for whom. Among our own clientele, we have identified some excellent opportunities for extending our services in useful ways. At the top of this list are graduate students who have left campus, are still enrolled in dissertation work, but not near an adequate library willing to open its doors to them. One has communicated with us from Russia. We are trying to find ways to highlight our enhanced ability to assist such students and to identify others in similar categories (e.g., faculty on sabbatical leave). The policy issues must be addressed and puzzling over them is proving painful for us, so we may give them undue emphasis. In any case, our greatest task is to make the service readily available, at all points of need, to the clientele we are able to serve. Integrating an "ask a librarian" option throughout the electronic library. The Web offers great advantages in meeting this objective, allowing us to insert our offer of assistance throughout our described services, at any and every point we think likely to be relevant to the user’s needs, in an unobtrusive manner. The description of our department and its services includes a "walking tour" of our physical area. A click on the reference desk itself offers text on the options for getting help. The first presented is "send an e‑mail message" and a click on that option brings up a form that can be sent to LIBREF.  We are identifying other such opportunities; they are virtually limitless. We must also find appropriate ways to do more than solicit "comments." On entering and (even more likely) on leaving a given bibliographic file, index, or text service, the user should be able to send not only a comment but a question to a reference librarian. This is a more complex problem, but one worth pursuing. All reference librarians deal every day with the patron who approaches with a question about how to use a particular source when the truth is that source itself is not the best one for the problem at hand. We know the dialogue that is possible in helping to refine the question that often begins by asking which index to use. We believe our experience of over seven years in offering an e‑mail‑based reference service demonstrates that students and faculty find it useful and that librarians and staff find that it allows them to extend their reach in a way that complements existing service patterns. That experience has also taught us that success is completely dependent upon understanding the external network environment which will include, of course, unique features on each campus. This leads us to conclude our remarks by offering two points to add to the ones we offered earlier. 1) Consider closely your own campus networked information environment. Success in offering reference assistance will be tied directly to how well‑positioned and integrated your service is to the multiple points of entry a student may be offered to networked information systems. 2) If you move to more open networked environments such as World Wide Web as your primary information environment, define your primary clientele and make it clear to all who may see your offer of assistance, who is actually eligible to receive it. The physical library offers an environment in which it is possible to identify indirectly the need for assistance. We must emulate that environment in the electronic library. The need is still there, to a considerable extent intensified. Students and librarians still value face‑to‑face contact in a library. They also value the delivery over the network of human, expert reference assistance. 1. Ann Bristow, "Academic Reference Service Over Electronic Mail," C&R L News 53 (November 1992): 631‑32+ This article, posted here with permission from C&R L News, can be cited as: Bristow, Ann and Buechley, Mary. "Academic Reference Service over E-mail: an Update." College and Research Libraries News. No 7 (July/Aug. 1995) p. 459-62. <http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/reference/email/02.html> Back to Electronic Reference: History and Research

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