Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore a new research area: orally‐based information. Design/methodology/approach – The study utilizes a social constructionist approach. The social constructionist meta‐theory, which holds that contributions to knowledge can be made orally,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the communicative rituals of opening and closing manifested in e‐mail‐based Internet Public Library's (IPL's) online reference interaction. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 400 transcripts comprising user queries and responses by...