A day in the life of an electronic cottager
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045138 |
| Published date | 01 March 1992 |
| Pages | 131-132 |
| Date | 01 March 1992 |
| Author | Reva Basch |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Guest
Editorial
A
day in the life of
an
electronic cottager
Reva Basch
Until last summer, when I moved the photocopier
to
a separ-
ate
table,
I was working not just
from
a
home
office but from
a
desktop
office. From left to right, on a six-foot golden oak
desk (a 1950s
high-school-principal
model that I got a
decade
ago,
free for
the
hauling) sit
a
fax
machine,
a
386
IBM-clone
PC,
a CD-ROM drive and a laser printer. That array still
leaves room for
some
files
(and
piles),
a
Rolodex,
and
a
tarn-
ished silver julep
cup
that
I use as
a pencil holder.
The entire house is
wired:
every phone is
a two-line model,
including the ones in the bathrooms (the cordless picks up
both personal
and business lines
too).
The
third line
is
shared
by fax and modem, and extends to the dining room and an
alcove off the master
bedroom.
Another
386
machine,
osten-
sibly
a
laptop,
spends
most of
its time in the
latter location.
Excessive? I think
not.
The core of
my
business is online
research,
plus writing and
consulting on issues related
to
elec-
tronic
information
retrieval.
It
makes
sense
to me
that
I
spend
several hours a day online, linked up to research databases,
computer conferences and electronic mail services. Except
for when I run errands in the middle of
the
day (flexibility is
one of the joys of working at
home),
or meet a friend for lunch,
I almost never interact with another person face-to-face be-
tween 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 or 6:00 p.m.
E-mail
and fax have
replaced
many
of
the routine
transactions
that used to
involve
a
phone call or a
protracted correspondence via
US
mail.
Like
being
on
the job
And yet the patterns and rhythms of my day are similar in
many ways to those of more conventional, non-electronic
jobs and
workplaces.
Over a
cup
of coffee,
I scan
national and
international
headlines on
Dow
Jones
News/Retrieval
and get
a quick update
on the
local scene
by
browsing
the
News con-
ference on The WELL. Before I settle down to business, I
exchange electronic messages with some friends and col-
leagues
on
GEnie,
The
WELL
and
CompuServe.
Like
hanging out by
the
company coffee
machine,
we
talk
about what we did over
the
weekend, exchange the latest in-
dustry gossip, compare notes on upcoming assignments,
commiserate about our workloads and the difficult projects
we're struggling with, and lend advice and support when it's
called
for.
Some of
this chat happens
privately,
in E-mail,
but
much of it is open to anyone who happens to be passing
through the Working from Home Forum on CompuServe or
GEnie's Home Office and Small Business RoundTable. My
professional organisation, The Association of Independent
Information Professionals, has a members-only section in
WFH where we
conduct monthly
meetings and discuss
Asso-
ciation
business
without having to leave our respective chairs.
Not a bad
idea,
productivity-wise, for
a small
business,
espe-
cially when you consider that those chairs are in places as
diverse as
Australia,
Luxembourg,
Argentina,
Canada
and the
United States.
Making contacts from home
Of course, computer conferences and bulletin boards like
these aren't just for socializing and virtual coffee breaks.
They can be a source for
clients,
too,
and other
business
con-
tacts important to small and independent businesses. Al-
though a hard-sell approach is generally frowned upon, and
advertising per se is banned outright on most boards, it's a
very
effective
and
relatively low-cost
medium
for letting hun-
dreds
of
people get to know you and the goods or services you
provide. I've gotten research, consulting
and
journalistic as-
signments from online
contacts;
subcontracted work
to
other
research professionals,
some
of whom I've never met face-to-
face;
and tapped
into the
administrative,
legal
and
accounting
expertise of dozens of
experts
—
and
paid nothing but con-
nect
time
for
the
privilege.
Daily routine
Having made
my
transition
into
the work
day by
catching up
with friends and colleagues, I turn to the projects at hand.
There are
searches to
run
for several
clients:
several
European
companies to research on Data-Star (better wait until
10.00 a.m. my time when the discount for North American
users kicks in); some case law work that calls for
LEXIS;
a
comprehensive full-text newspaper search that will involve
both
Vu/Text and
DataTimes,
as well as
Dow Jones News/Re-
trieval for
Wall Street Journal
and NEXIS for the
New York
Times;
and finally a quick check in the telecommunications
newsletters
on
NewsNet
to
supplement
the results
of
the
Dia-
log search
I ran
yesterday.
That reminds
me:
I'd better check
my
Dialog
mailbox;
the
offline prints I ordered via Dialmail are probably there. It's
nice to know that I can download them at my convenience,
and for
much
less money than I'd pay to capture them directly
The Electronic Library, Vol. 10, No. 3, June 1992 131
To continue reading
Request your trial