Email is a true case of “familiarity breeds contempt”, but it is also indespensible. Email is the one tool that I will say that you cannot do without when doing online research. Not only will you need an email address for registering for various services and resources, but you will at least occassionally want to email yourself notes, links, and attachments. It is possible to use email for organizing your entire research process, especially with a large memory service like Gmail.
Just about every school, college, and university offers a free email account to any student. Many of them allow you to keep your email account after graduation. You receive at least one email account with any ISP account. There are also hundreds of free email services. So there is no excuse for not having an email account. You probably should have at least one main account, and a spare or two that you use for registering for accounts and services. By using several email accounts, you reduce the chance of getting spam and other unwanted email on your main account.
At least one of your email accounts should have a web interface. This way you can check your email at any web computer, and email things to yourself anytime you are online.
The collaboration aspects of email are obvious. However, you should remember the potential delay if you try decision-making by email. All it takes is one person not able to reach their email for a few hours to hold up the whole process. Having group-members in different time zones can exacerbate the delays. On the other hand, groups spanning multiple time zones can also take advantage of the “delay” by emailing projects in sequence. As the next person comes online, they can pick up the work, then pass it on to the next time zone. Email allows worldwide collaboration, without someone having to get up at 2 am for a conference call.
You can also use email to take notes. Send an email to yourself with the citation (author, title, etc.) of the book or article you are reading, and a link if it’s online, with a summary, facts, or quotes that you want to remember or use in your paper. If you use email that allows you to sort emails into folders, you can bring all the emails for a particular class or project into one folder. GoogleMail, Yahoo! Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird, Outlook, and Outlook Express all allow sorting, as do most email services and software these days. Thunderbird can even be used directly from a USB drive, allowing you to have the benefits of a desktop client (like offline reading/composing) and still be mobile.
Again, and this is probably the only “should” you’ll see in this site, you should have email to do online research.
