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"Reasonable" E-Mail Contact?



Dear Folks,

Steve Masar asked whether it's "reasonable" to expect researchers to
provide e-mail addresses along with/instead of U. S. postal mail
addresses. (I refuse to use the derogatory term "snail mail.")

Sorry, but the current insistence on e-mail addresses pushes all the
wrong buttons with me.  As an archivist, I don't care how people prefer
to be contacted, although I don't like playing phone tag any more than
Steve does, especially the long-distance kind.  Besides, I often end up
using an e-mail address only to request a postal mail address in order
to send the patron Xerox copies of the material requested. (No, we can't
scan the info or provide it all over the internet).

As a researcher, I simply am not interested in having a computer/Web
access/e-mail/etc. in my home.  The reasons are many: money, lifestyle
choice, comfort (or lack thereof) with technology.  I have lost contact
with my remaining high school friends because I cannot provide them with
a private e-mail address to which they can direct their e-letters!  So
be it.  But e-mail is only one of the legitimate choices of
communication open to us at this moment in time.  For many people, it is
still not a viable/desirable choice and may never be.  Who are the
"e-mail police" to demand otherwise?

Unfortunately, I see our society trending more and more away from choice
and toward mandatory use of e-mail.  I hope that we archivists,
committed as we are to equal access to information, won't lend ourselves
to this troubling abridgment of civic and personal freedom.

Now if we could just get more researchers to use those nifty SASEs . . .

Chris Harper
Archives Assistant, Saint Louis University
harperc@slu.edu

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