Our "Ask a Librarian" folk have seen info about a few pilot SMS -> email reference projects relying on gateway services like the one provided by Altarama in Australia. These were done in early to late 2005-2006 [more info] My colleagues and I are curious about what we could try and do with some of the (much less expensive) new email to SMS gateway web applications that have started to proliferate in the states.

Examples include:

• Joopz
• Teleflip
• Twitterbot

It might be interesting. My concern is that students who are trying to send SMS probably think of it more along the lines of chat with an expectation of "near instant" response. While this would be funneled into our email reference work flow which currently guarantees a 2 business day turn around.

We shall see.