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 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. 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. Still missing from these two rational choice theories is the social context in which managers and other people operate.