I haven't used IMing in forever!!! I use to do it a lot in high school and when I first went to college to stay in touch with all of my friends. It cost a lot more to call long distance then. Oh how times have changed in just 10 years. I haven't used it lately. I call because it's cheaper now and I don't have to be at the computer to do it. I've also forgotten how many abbreviations there are in IMing and texting. It is its own separate language - and just like a language if you don't use it you lose it. Going through this assignment I'm remembering things I use to know and do. I know I took a class through Cardinal Stritch last spring and we used Skype and Elluminate for class meeting and groups. I lived in Sun Prairie, another classmate lived in Fond du Lac, and the other lived in Milwaukee. It would have taken up so much time for us to all drive to Milwaukee and meet to do class projects! All we really needed to coordinate was the time we were going to meet online. Through these programs we were easily able to complete group assignments and class assignments. It was so handy to meet and do work that way!
I think IMing could be helpful in libraries. I like the idea of having IM help for patrons. I know I use that a lot when I contact a company instead of trying to call and get all of the voice prompts. I think it would help make library staff more approachable. However, it also means someone has to always be paying attention to the IM window. I wonder what the demand would be versus the time we put into it.
I think it would also be nice to have for communication with other staff in our building and in our areas of interest. I could easily just shoot an IM to the person I want to talk to instead of walking up to the front of the library to find them and ask them a question. Additionally, it would be quicker to ask other children's librarians a question and get an immediate response than it takes to go through the kidslist list-serv. Sometimes that is all that we need. I think that would be really nice to have around. People you want right at your fingertips. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Your point about the amount of time spent on IM reference versus demand is a good one. I know that the SCLS libraries that are doing IM reference aren't seeing a lot of traffic (but I don't know how much they advertise it). One way to get around that is to have the person staffing the reference desk keep Meebo up and running. Because it can notify you of a new IM by sound, you can pretty much ignore it until someone needs you.
Post a Comment