Quote Originally Posted by mjj1976 View Post
I suppose paying overseas postage to deliver an actual letter might provide an air of seriousness that e-mail wouldn't.
Yeah, definitely (some businesslike stationery helps, too), and another facet of it is that, in general, the guy (or gal) who answers emails sent to a site's public e-mail address is often a completely different person than whomever might ultimately be handed a physical letter for consideration (the same goes for people who answer phone calls attached to a public phone number). A letter is much more likely to land on the desk of the specific person who could handle your request (it's old-fashioned but true: physical letters are still taken much more seriously than emails, an effect magnified, however unfairly, by how "digital" the site's daily operations are). Honest and for true, I'm not just guessing: I've found this to be true in at least two-thirds of my own research requests, whether for modern restaurant/hotel layouts or for detailed plans of Russian monasteries.