Should I have contact information on my blog?

A reader's question:
What are your thoughts about putting an email/contact address on a blog? I don’t want the email to be harvested but I think I need a way for people to get hold of me aside from the comments. What’s your recommendation?

China Business Watch's Answer:

This is an interesting question because there are so many possible ways you can address this.
One solution is to have a separate HTML form that lets people enter comments for you independent of the blog comment form. That's what I do for the contact page and plenty of people contact me through that form too: Ask Us A Question.
Probably the most common solution is to publish your email address. That's a good idea if indeed that's the kind of contact you seek. If you choose that route I would strongly suggest that you set up a new address just for blog-based communication, even if it's an alias that routes directly to your mailbox. This way if it does end up attracting too much spam, you can easily shut it off without affecting any of your existing correspondents.
And, a smart strategy is to use a graphics editor to create a GIF or JPEG image that is your email address, then give it a generic name and include it as an img src tag only. Your users will have to type in your address rather than having a one-click feature. There is a free web app for E-Mail Icon Generator, http://services.nexodyne.com/email/index.php .