Consider Phoning Users in E-mail Reference

Users submitting their question using the e-mail reference form at the Newman Library website, are asked to provide a telephone number. This information was obtained in order to give librarians the option for replying by phone to user queries which may be a more timely manner for response than responding by e-mail.

I would like to encourage use of this form of “reference hybridization”(as defined in a submitted scholarly article I wrote), as it may be appropriate and allow for a quicker response time to a reference transaction initially begun in e-mail mode.

Please note that if you elect to respond to an e-mail query by phone, please be sure to follow the simple steps to “close” the question noted in the E-Mail Reference Policy Manual at \\Numan\Shared\Divisions\IS\E-Mail Reference .

In addition to a brief note about how the question was handled, it would be helpful to know what time you phoned the user to see if this in fact leads to a more timely response. Overall, this information will help us keep track of how e-mail questions were handled for statistical purposes.

Please let me know if you have any questions.