Public E-mail Inquiries to SIL via LIBMAIL@si.edu: An Overview and Observations

This is from a handout I prepared for the SIL NPS department's annual event for visiting CUA library school students.  This year's theme was "Outside & In: Public Inquiries, SI and SI Libraries"

• In 1997, in an effort to centralize all e-mail queries to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL), LIBMAIL@si.edu was created. This e-mail address is included for most organizational public contacts on SIL web pages and promotional literature. It continues to be widely used today. Recent topics of queries from the public have ranged from African-American postmasters to the “Zebra Wolf.”
• Monitored primarily by one SIL librarian, with occasional help from colleagues, an average of 100 to 150 e-mails from all over the U.S. and the world are received each month. This level has remained strangely consistent for over 10 years. This is compared to the Smithsonian’s Visitor Information and Associates' Reception Center (VIARC) general public e-mail address, info@si.edu, which currently receives approximately 600 e-mails per month, a number that is gradually decreasing.
• A majority of directly answered LIBMAIL e-mail queries are from people wanting material they identify in our library catalog, SIRIS (Smithsonian Institution Research Information System). SIRIS also consists of other Smithsonian databases, such as those associated with the Smithsonian Archives. New SIRIS cross-search capabilities http://siris-collections.si.edu/search/ and its being indexed by Google have increased queries generated by SIRIS searches. These are usually answered by encouraging users to utilize the interlibrary loan services of their local or affiliated library.
• A great number of queries are book and artifact appraisal and authentication requests. Citizens seem to believe that the Smithsonian is a federally-funded “Antiques Roadshow.” Since the Smithsonian cannot legally provide these services, we direct folks to appraisal resource links on our FAQ: http://www.sil.si.edu/Galaxy.cfm?id=2.91

• For the past six months a clear majority of queries needing to be forwarded to SIL colleagues are about our trade catalog collection (and more) at the National Museum of American History. The trade catalogs are not digitized and are often not available for loan.
• Young people who are used to instant messaging will often expect instant results (the Smithsonian’s IT department disables any instant messaging or chat software because of security concerns). Some will e-mail us on a late Sunday night for an early Monday library appointment. If the LIBMAIL librarian is out for a day, a message like this can be seen too late
• As digital cameras become ubiquitous and have larger resolutions, the public often attaches photos direct from their cameras that overwhelm limited mailbox sizes (our limit at the SI is 20 megabytes). It’s difficult to forward these photos to other SI departments, and the message needs to be deleted ASAP.
• Our digitization efforts have increased user expectations. SIL has recently completed the digitization of the SI Contributions series, and the public expects to see other historical SI scholarly publications such as the much-requested Bureau of Ethnology (BAE), and other Annual Reports of the Smithsonian. These have not yet been digitized, but are slated to be in the near future.
• Until recent years, 80-90% of e-mail received at LIBMAIL was spam. It was very time-consuming to vet these. In July 2007, the Smithsonian enhanced its Spam filtering by implementing a front-end Spam filter to EMS from Postini, which has been very effective. A daily “quarantine summary” e-mail message is received showing blocked e-mails – for LIBMAIL this can be up to 30 blocked messages a day. Legitimate public queries are only occasionally found to be blocked, and can be retrieved.
• When the Smithsonian inevitably becomes embroiled in a public controversy or embarrassment, LIBMAIL can sometimes be a place where the public vents with nasty e-mails. Fortunately, SIL does not need to respond and these e-mails are often forwarded to VIARC, which usually has developed a polite form to reply.
• Queries come from all over the U.S., and these are slightly prioritized over foreign queries, since the Smithsonian is partially funded by U.S. taxpayers. 15-35% of queries per month can be identified as foreign in origin. Google’s Translations tool is often handy for reading some foreign language e-mails.
• We receive a good number of “permission” requests to use Smithsonian-produced literature and images in various projects. Most of the time, they fall within Fair Use guidelines, otherwise these are routed to our Digital Media Office, which oversees use of digital images we produce.
• A common inquiry is along the lines of “I have an uncle who has something in the Smithsonian. How can I see it?” These questions tend to arise from family myths because everyone likes to think their family has an important link to the nation’s past. Unfortunately, without having paperwork and knowing a specific date and which Smithsonian museum received the artifact, not much can be found. There well over 100 million objects at the Smithsonian!
• With alarming regularly over the years we are asked in all seriousness about how the “African American Archives at the Smithsonian Institute” discovered that the word “picnic” has racist origins. There is no such archive here – this is an urban myth. In the reply, links are provided to the myth-busting web site, http://www.snopes.com
• LIBMAIL is often the first place Smithsonian researchers go when they have problems accessing the many database and e-journal products we subscribe to. Scientists, in particular, are so used to having online journal content that they expect our online subscriptions to back-issues to go back much further than we can afford. We are contacted via LIBMAIL as soon as they get a log-in prompt for products such as Elsevier’s Science Direct.
• It is usually a judgment call to determine whether an artifact is being offered via e-mail is for sale or as a donation. All of these queries are taken seriously and routed to an appropriate museum, unless it’s for a common item with a link to an Ebay auction.
• We don’t like to admit it, but there will occasionally be mistakes in our catalog or on our internally produced web resources. The e-mailing public is a great resource for finding these errors so that we can have the best online resources possible.
• When there is time, we welcome regular inquiries from Library and Information Studies students. Recent questions have been about our digital projects, repository, and collection development policies.