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Re: Email & research requests



"Eric v.d. Luft, Ph.D., M.L.S." wrote:

> I agree with Laurie. The entire point of being a librarian is to serve the library's users, whether
> they give their requests to us in-person, by phone, by e-mail, by fax, by snail mail, by carrier
> pigeon, or by smoke signals.

Telepathy?

> Whenever I receive a ref question from a user, I drop whatever I'm
> doing (unless of course I'm already working on a previously received ref question) and attend to it.
> I regard myself as a collaborator in their research.

Well said!  (I submit selected "thank yous" and book aknowledgements
as part of my yearly evaluation package.)

> I'm happy to do it. Any level of service lower
> than that is poor librarianship.

This is pretty much my take on it, and my practice.  We exist
to help people with the knowledge and information that we have,
and they lack.  (Of course, private institutions may have other
priorities, but public service is our bottom line.)

Ed Frank
U Memphis Libraries

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