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Re: Email & Increased Research Requests



Hi all,

I've been following this thread with much interest. When I started at the
Library of Congress a bit more than three years ago there were two people
handling the reference email for American Memory and the Learning Page. We
had on average about 500 messages a month and had a statement on our
website that we would send a response in five days even if that response
was to say that we had forwarded the question to another Library division
for response. Granted we have few walk-ins (excluding those people
attending demonstrations and workshops) and few calls so handling
everything was fairly easy for us.

The Library has now instituted the QuestionPoint system
<http://www.questionpoint.org/> which was created with OCLC. This allowed
all the Library divisions that participated (a few are not) to have a
standard form and an "Ask a Librarian" link on their home pages as well as
the home page for the Library. We have also instituted chat for an hour a
day five days a week. Granted we now have 13 reference staff (excluding
three that are on special assignment and are not doing reference) but our
reference questions have doubled and we are in what is normally considered
the quiet time of year. We are expecting a massive increase when school
starts in a few weeks. Plus we are experiencing increasing requests for
demonstrations and workshops and dealing with a new requirement to develop
a subject speciality and to be willing to publish, present papers and do
collection development in that area. We are not the only ones experiencing
e-reference stats increase. The Main reading room has seen its email
reference requests quadruple, something that has served as a wake-up call
for staff and has inspired some calls for QuestionPoint to be dismantled.

I think that especially in these times where we are getting more and more
email requests especially from users who do not know how to use our
services that setting longer periods for some responses is a good idea. We
do say that responses will be received in five days but have the right to
write back and say this is going to take longer than I thought. We'll get
back to you within a certain period of time. Most patrons are just
downright thrilled that you wrote back to let them know what was going on.
I too think three weeks especially when dealing with archives/manuscript
collections is not a bad turn around time especially when you have other
projects going on and other priorities to deal with. I think that we have
to be honest with ourselves and our patrons. If it's going to take three
weeks to get a reference response let them know. If someone objects
encourage them either to come in and do the research themselves or to hire
someone to do it for them (I know LC has a list of qualified researchers
that someone can call to do research for patrons who can't come in). Also
let them know that this is not your typical public library where the
information may be in a book on a shelf. We always have opportunities to
educate our patrons about what archives are and how they are different from
libraries and from the web. Let them know why it takes longer to find
information, why they may not be able to get copies of items they want and
why they may have to do some work to understand the item especially if it's
handwritten. The web is opening us up to a larger audience than ever
before. Let's help them to understand us and to use all the information
sources that are available on and off the web.

Now to go do triage for the reference team.

Danna Bell-Russel


At 03:37 PM 8/7/2002 -0500, Erin Foley wrote:
We first began answering questions by e-mail in April 1999.  We had 267 that
year (11% of our total reference questions), 915 in 2000 (37%), 984 in 2001
(43%), and are currently up to 770 through July 2002 (52%).  We also have
developed a large backlog, primarily of e-mail questions.

Our total reference numbers keep going up. Although some of the e-mail
questions replace those we would have answered formerly by phone, mail, or
in person, we seem to be getting lots of the "oh, yeah, let's e-mail Circus
World to see if they have anything" questions, questions that normally would
not have been asked due to time constraints, or from general lack of
interest in pursuing a question in all of its many possible directions.
Many of these people seem to be angry that we do not provide answers the
same day.  And they do want "everything" copied for them.  Of course, none
of our indexes is online, nor the sources the indexes cite.  We do a lot of
photocopying.

Actually, I think a 3-week delay is downright minimal.  Good for them that
they let people know upfront.

Erin Foley
Archivist
Circus World Museum
550 Water Street
Baraboo, WI  53913

608-356-8342, ext. 3283
fax 608-355-7959
efoley.cwm@baraboo.com



----- Original Message -----
From: "Denman, Joan" <JDenman@WW2.FSU.EDU>
To: <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 3:08 PM
Subject: Email & Increased Research Requests


| In earlier emails, Rick Barry and Peter Hirsch, wondered if the example of
the Bentley Historical Library's three weeks delay in responding to
reference requests is portending the future. I think it is.

....It is becoming more apparent that numerous people expect your complete
collections to be online or for you to provide them with extensive research.
What is the experience of other repositories?
|
| --
| Joan E. Denman
| Senior Archivist &
| Archival Manager
| Institute on World War II
| & the Human Experience
| Department of History
| Florida State University
| Tallahassee, FL 32306-2200
| 850-644-9033
| Email: jdenman@ww2.fsu.edu
| Institute's Email: ww2@ww2.fsu.edu
| Institute's webpage: www.fsu.edu/~ww2

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Danna C. Bell-Russel
Digital Reference Specialist
Library of Congress
202-707-4159
dbell@loc.gov

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