Spring Cleaning #29: E-mail

Confession: I am an e-mail addict.

I don't know how I kept in touch before there was e-mail. Mike L. says I am one of the super-users at HCPL, and he is probably right. I believe in communication as a management tool, and I send lots of e-mail to my staff, the library Friends, my community partners, and the Sunday staff that work at my library.

That means I also get lots back. And this is where things sometimes go awry.

I already have LOTS of folders, and I try to respond/file/forward/delete e-mail everyday. It STILL builds up. I have been deleting right and left for this exercise, and my Outlook Inbox is still well over 1,000 items. Bad. It is going to take me some time yet to get back on track. But I will DO it.

My address book is large, too, as one might expect, but it is pretty up to date. I review it on a regular basis.

One useful thing I have found to clear the storage volume quickly is to start with the the "Large Mail" and "Unread Mail" folders in Outlook. I have also been better lately at saving important attachments to a file and then deleting the e-mail copy. Too often in the past I used to save both. This was particularly bad if you made changes to one of the versions, but not the other. Invariably, you send someone the wrong version.

Besides my work e-mail, I have a regular home e-mail through my cable provider. I also have a more flexible e-mail through the free online Google/gmail that I can use in case I have fears of being spammed when I sign up for something. These days you get enough spam even when you are actively trying to avoid it. It that regard, "10 Minute Mail" sounds like a useful site to use on special occasions. "Spamhole" may be, too, but unfortunately, I was Forbidden to Access the link that was given in the iHCPLnextgen blog.

A pet peeve of mine is the forwarding of hoax e-mails. Often senders are unaware of how they can check on the validity of these before forwarding, since some sound pretty real. I try tactfully to send them a reply from Snopes.com or TruthorFiction.com or Purportal.com ("The bunk stops here...") so that they have a weapon in their arsenal for the next assault.