Funny how technology oozes into your daily routine and then, all of a sudden, you don’t know how you lived without, say, cell phones or laptop computers.

For the reference librarians at the Springfield-Greene County Libraries—the experts at answering almost any questions you can come up with—e-mail is the new way they do their jobs.

In ye olde days, telephone reference was the standard when you needed an answer easily and quickly. Now it’s e-mail.

In 2005, the library’s Ask a Librarian reference service received 3,776 questions via e-mail. To access Ask a Librarian, patrons click on the Contact Us link that appears on every one of the more than 100,000 pages on the library’s web site, thelibrary.org.

“Answering Ask a Librarian is one of the favorite parts of my job because I like using technology and e-mail and being online,” said Shelley White, who answers the general questions and distributes other queries to staff with expertise in a certain area or other departments.

Lynn Clark serves as the Ask a Librarian backup and Mary Harrison answers and distributes the e-mail on weekends. “We make sure we have someone answering e-mail all the time we are open,” said District Reference Manager Donna Bacon.

According to data from surveys, the reference e-mail service is still new to many patrons—almost 80% indicated that it was the first time they had used the service. Seventy-five per cent said they had received a better answer “from this resource than I would have found on my own.”

A whopping 93% said they had received “sufficient information” and 90% thought they had received “the answer in time to meet my needs.” Sixty-eight per cent of those who completed the survey indicated that they preferred asking questions online.

Questions from e-mailers run the gamut from “I read a book when I was a child about a cat that was all black except for the very tip of his tail. . .I’m fairly sure the cat’s name was Tippity Witchit. What is the title of the book. .? to “How many people are affected with AIDS/HIV in the world? Need to know in 30 minutes.”

The answers: “The Secret of Tippity Witchit” and 39.4 million.

Contact Jeanne C. Duffey, community relations director for the Springfield-Greene County Library District, at jeanned@thelibrary.org.