I give up. What is the point to trying to weed out spam? I belong to about 4-5 library email lists. Some like MEDLIB-L are very active, where others I get one message a month (if that many). I also administer all of my library's electronic journals. So every medical journal that we subscribe to electronically, my email is the contact person. Yes every great once and while when I have scrounged up my few pennies and I can afford a trip on Southwest I have it email me my itenerary to my work address.

Point being, my emailing activities (mostly work related) have left me with a work account that is constantly flooded with spam. I go through 100-200 spam a day, just to get 30 or so real emails. When I went on maternity leave I had to come in twice to empty out my email before my account got fried. Each time I went in, I had over 1000 emails (yes I did turn off my email lists) of which 90% were spams. It has gotten worse. We have recently changed from GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook. Good freaking God my spam has increased at an alarming rate.

So this has me thinking about how spam effects libraries and its users.

The obvious is that your email account is huge and you lose real email because you accidently delete it while you are sifting through the junk.

Library alert systems to not cross patrons' spam filters. How many times has a patron gotten annoyed that they were not notified by email when the book they requested was in? Are they using a spam blocker? Do they know if there mail provider is using a spam blocker? Now libraries have to add another helpful reminder to patrons to add the library to the safe list.

Patrons don't want to give you any information for fear you will sell it to spammers. Unfortunately no amount of explaining that libraries would never disclose their patrons' information can soothe some of these users.

Viruses, ack! Users who access their internet mail on the library computers can easily accidently open and unleash viruses. Library staff can accidently open their mail and launch a virus.

Anybody got any other ways spam can make life for libraries a pain? Comment if you got some ideas.