In praise of student email

Do your students have school-issued email accounts? If not, are they allowed to access their personal email accounts at school?

Do you encourage students to contact you via your school email if needed?

I hope so on all counts because email can be a powerful tool to help students at the point of need.

Last week I received several emails from students, and all were at night, over the weekend, or on a holiday. These industrious high school kids needed help with database logins, assistance in finding a particular news article, and clarification about when we'd scheduled our book club meeting. One awesome middle schooler emailed to recommend several books she recently read and loved for our new library blog.

If your school doesn't allow student email, I would encourage you to use these and other examples to campaign for this useful tool to expand the reach of your library. It's one more way that you can create a community of readers and learners at your campus.

Save the time of the user OR How to email efficiently

We all get tons of email, so I've compiled a few ideas to help us be more efficient.

1. Before you send an email to a group, be sure that it applies to the whole group. If it does not, only email the persons to whom it is applicable.

2. Rarely “reply all.” Instead, reply only to the original recipient or to the person to whom it is applicable.

3. At the risk of being redundant, rarely “reply all.” As Ranganathan says, “Save the time of the user!”

4. Make sure that your subject line matches the email’s content. One subject per email is best.

5. When replying to someone, be sure your reply matches their subject line. If you’re changing the subject, change the subject line.

6. If you have more than one point to make, enumerate for easier reading.

7. Use short paragraphs.

8. Read over your email before you hit send. How’s the tone? Do you have errors? Is your meaning clear?

9.  Bcc yourself if you need a copy.  Keep your inbox cleaned out so it can serve as a "to do" list.

10. If email takes over your day, close it while you're working on other projects and only open it at the beginning of the day, before lunch, and before you leave for the evening.