This paper builds on the respected and well-known theories of media richness, social presence, and social influence, extending them to the library reference center setting where communication between librarians and information seekers can be observed. The paper proposes that one factor of considerable importance should be added to the theories discussed, the personal financial cost constraint that influences the media use preferences of information seekers who have ambiguous questions to communicate.

Theory builds a framework and offers direction for future research. The extension of theory here is that cost is a substantial contextual determinant that needs to be added; however, the reader should note that the extension proposed in this paper is based on informed speculation and not empirical evidence. The paper places the reference librarian in the role of manager, and in this setting, the financial cost of communication with the reference librarian is related to broadly defined categories of geographic distance. This paper provides a brief introduction to the theories of media richness, social presence, and social influence and then applies those theories in the library reference setting. In this brief examination, the factor of financial cost appears to be missing as an important factor in the selection of communication technologies.

Researchers Daft and Lengel (1984) propose that communication media have varying capacities for resolving ambiguity, negotiating varying interpretations, and facilitating understanding. Using four criteria, these researchers present a media richness hierarchy, arranged from high to low degrees of richness, to illustrate the capacity of media types to process ambiguous communication in organizations. The criteria are (a) the availability of instant feedback; (b) the capacity of the medium to transmit multiple cues such as body language, voice tone, and inflection; (c) the use of natural language; and (d) the personal focus of the medium. Face-to-face communication is the richest communication medium in the hierarchy followed by telephone, electronic mail, letter, note, memo, special report, and finally, flier and bulletin. The media richness theory suggests that effective managers make rational choices matching a particular communication medium to a specific task or objective and to the degree of richness required by that task (Trevino, Daft, & Lengel, 1990).

Social presence theory also contends that a continuum of degrees applies, this time to the degree to which the medium facilitates awareness of the other person and interpersonal relationships during the communication exchange (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Face-to-face message exchange contains the greatest social presence, followed by audio plus video, audio-only, and print. Still missing from these two rational choice theories is the social context in which managers and other people operate.

In response, a subjectively rational theory was developed by Fulk, Schmitz, and Steinfield (1990), the social influence model of technology use. These theorists point out that current organizational theory is filled with considerations of behaviors that occur in a very social world of group norms and other behaviors (Fulk et al., 1990). The medium selected for the communication may not follow the media richness hierarchy model precisely because of influences in the social world. They suggest that these influences include attitudes and statements of co-workers; past experience, both positive and negative, with communication media; knowledge of the medium; and perceptions of its usefulness. The key point Fulk et al. make is that both sense-making and behavior are subject to social influences, and although communication choice decision-making may be efficiency-motivated, it need not be. They suggest that to move forward with our understanding of sense-making and behavior of people, we must consider the social forces that influence people as well as media choice based on interpersonal interactions and richness of the communications media. These theories are all important to our understanding of new technologies and how people select the communication channel they want to use. They apply to any number of everyday settings and communication functions. The next section of this paper extends these theories to the reference answering function in the setting of the library as well as other settings where knowledge workers are in communication with others providing information and answers to questions.

Reference librarians manage the process of locating and communicating answers to questions conveyed by people who may come to the library building with their question or, alternatively, may send their question to their librarian from half-way around the world. In the dyadic communication process between the reference librarian and the information seeker, the exchange of shared meanings is critical to forming a basis for common understanding. Jesse Shera, a noted librarian and professor, suggested in 1981 that librarians look to symbolic interactionism for a proper foundation or orientation to their work (Machlup & Mansfield, 1983). Symbolic interactionism refers to the process by which people relate to their own minds and the minds of others. In ill-defined situations, people must create a common understanding before they can make decisions that all can comprehend and accept (Weick, 1979). This is often the case in the reference interview. Reference librarians interact with information seekers who are asking for (a) migratory types of knowledge, the type that is contained in books or architectural drawings, or (b) embedded knowledge of the type that is more difficult to provide because it is an accumulation of skill sets or expertise constructed over time (Badaracco, 1991). For reference librarians, embedded knowledge is sometimes referred to as the "value added" expertise they provide to negotiate meaning with information seekers and locate sets of data to provide answers or communicate the type of information needed. Librarians use nearly all of the communication media types described on the media richness scale, ranging from face-to-face interactions to bulletin postings that convey information. The same is true for their communication partners who may use one or several selecting from a wide variety of communication technologies to approach the reference process. The work of reference librarians centers on communication that negotiates meaning and is characterized as using new media and new technologies to bring the graphic record and human minds together through the process of inquiry.

Many people think of libraries as a "place," however, with the introduction of the electronic library, the physical space is now extended to include new technologies that enable the inquiry process to proceed with less dependence on place. Information seekers vary greatly in physical proximity to the library. Some deliver their question to the reference desk by coming into the library for a rich face-to-face negotiation of the question and exchange of meaning. Some pose questions using telephone communication, and others use e-mail to communicate their information need. The reference interview is conducted using whatever communication interaction is posed by the information seeker with the librarian most frequently responding to the communication partner using the technology that first brought the question to the reference desk. When e-mail is the communication medium of choice, e-mail is used by the reference librarian. When letters are used, the librarian uses the formal letter in response.

Using the media richness theory, we would expect that most information seekers, like managers, would select the richest face-to-face communication medium for posing their ambiguous inquiries. Fewer would select the telephone for communication interaction, and fewer still would select e-mail as the communication medium for conveying complex information needs. This would be bolstered by social presence theory. It would be supported in the symbolic interaction framework that suggests choice variables of (a) equivocality of message, (b) contextual determinants, and (c) the symbolic cues conveyed by the medium itself (Trevino et al., 1990). In fact, examination of ambiguous reference questions posed by information seekers and then classified by media type yield results very much like these theories suggest: information seekers who walk-in to conduct face-to-face transactions compose the largest group, followed by telephone callers. E-mail correspondents follow as the third group in size, and the medium least used is the letter posted in the mail. See Table 1.1 attached.

However, when the situational factor of geographic distance which carries with it an attendant dollar cost of communication is used to categorize these data, media choice patterns appear to change and do not match the predictions. The distance factor with its related cost calculated for communication types or categories wield, if would appear, considerable influence over choice of media when posing questions to the reference librarian. See Tables 1.2 and 1.3 attached where geographic distance is divided into three broad geographic categories: (1) local or immediate proximity, (2) within the United States, but not local, and (3) International, outside the borders of the United States.

Analysis of the geographic characteristics associated with information seekers show that e-mail is the medium of choice for those whose point of origin is International, outside the U. S., followed by voice communication interaction using the telephone. Face-to-face interaction is the least used for the International group. For those living within the U. S., but outside of the immediate geographic area, voice telephone is the dominant choice followed by e-mail, then letter, and as last choice, face-to-face communication. For those living in the proximate, immediate geographic area, face-to-face visits and voice telephone communication are preferred media choices with face-to-face communication interactions being predominant. E-mail communications are third choice in this ranking, and letters last. [In the case of letter correspondence, a high percentage of letters appear to arrive from prisons in close geographic proximity as well as distant locations.] We look to cost constraints placed on the information seeker's personal pocket book as a situational factor to explain these divisions and deviations from the predictions the theory of media richness would provide. Communication channel connectivity financial costs are only lightly considered in the theories discussed in this paper and deserve further careful study. We propose that in the case of the information seeker needing to conduct a communication exchange with those who have access to knowledge sources and tools like the reference librarian, cost of the communication channel and communication interaction not only matters; but, in fact, is the deciding rational choice factor used by the information seeker. Cost is an added rational choice factor used here to extend the theories of media richness, social presence, and social influence. We predict that if personal financial cost did not matter, every information seeker would choose face-to-face communication interactions, regardless of factors related to distance.

The relative cost of face-to-face visits to the library for the International information seeker are very high (shown as $$$$), telephone charges for conveyance of the communication exchange are relatively high but still less than face-to-face financial costs ($$$), while e-mail and letters represent the least expensive of the media choices (both shown as $). The most likely order of use relative to financial cost for those who are geographically distant appears to be face-to-face as the most expensive and least used despite its media richness, and email as the most likely to be used and least expensive to use. Letter and telephone occupy the third and second use positions in terms of media types selected for use by the International information seeker. For the information seeker within the United States, the cost factors are all similar to the array indicated for International information seekers: face-to-face media choice is still the most expensive and last selected, followed by telephone as the next most expensive with email and letter as the least expensive choices. In this case, however, the choices made do not match the cost array exactly. Telephone is the top media choice, but letters are selected after e-mail as a media choice, for reasons that are not wholly explained. It could be that once a certain threshold of financial cost is crossed, a less rich medium is selected. Face-to-face is the most expensive and is the last to be selected for use. In the third category, the local category, the first choice of media to use in the reference exchange is face-to-face, second is telephone, third is e-mail, and the least selected choice is the letter. Cost factors for the local information seeker with ambiguous questions are relatively the same across all of the media choices (all $), following closely the hierarchy presented in the theory of media richness.

This theory extension proposes that if cost did not matter, every information seeker would choose face-to-face communication interactions, regardless of factors related to distance. These data, although based on informed speculation rather than empirical evidence, indicate that this is not the case. Financial cost does appear to be a factor in media choice selection.

Choice of communication medium for the information seeker is a rational choice. Distance and geography affect the relative financial costs of different communications media and the media use choices made by information seekers. Distance and cost are interrelated in many ways, and in this discussion are lumped into very broad and non-specific categories to illustrate the point that financial cost matters. In addition, other situational factors may affect the information seeker's choice of media for communicating inquiries. These might include timeliness of anticipated response from the reference librarian; time to reach the librarian or knowledge worker using travel, letters, phone calls, or email; uncertainty about how to use the new communication technologies; and accessibility to alternative communication media or technologies. These potential contextual constraints also deserve study to determine if financial cost constraint or one of the other factors is in fact a dominant or driving factor in media choice.

This paper builds on theories of media richness, social presence, and social influence, connecting them to reference interviews conducted by librarians with information seekers, sometimes taking place in the library and sometimes using new communication technologies. None of these theories give more than passing reference to cost factors that people may be considering when making a media use choice. This paper, using the general example of a library reference setting where complex ambiguous questions are posed using a variety of media types, proposes that cost is a constraining factor in media choice for the information seeker and extends the theories presented in this paper to illustrate that cost influences media use choice. Cost matters, and, although the richest media may be preferred for the reference interview transaction, communication costs will be a constraining factor when geographic proximity is not present.

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