The skinny on Library IMing

As you can see, I have added an instant messaging widget to me blog using meebo.
Though I am been an enthusiastic IMer since middle school, today was my first experience with a program like meebo, which compiles your various IM accounts onto one buddy list and makes them accessible to you without having to download the messaging program. I found it to be quite user friendly and rather convenient. I've known about these sorts of programs for quite sometime, but if I'd known they were so easy to use, I may have kept up with contacts on my less used messaging programs rather than letting our contact slip down the wayside through the years.
Personally, I think Instant Messaging is a technology that, like it or hate it, will be a part of nearly all library systems within the next 5 years. Our branches have dabbled a bit in IMing, though I'm not sure to what degree. I know that most of the librarians have screen names for professional use between other staff members, whether or not they choose to use them. At this point, our library does not have a screen name available for interaction with the public. Some of the benefits of having one would be:
-opening up a venue of service for a different kind of patron base
-having the instant response of phone or in-person conversations and the written record of an email or letter request

Some potential obstacles would be:
-keeping statistics on IM requests
-scheduling a staff person to respond to IMs for all business hours
-preventing patron or staff from abusing privileges.

I am personally of the opinion that every computer within the library district should be logged in to a messaging program during business hours. For staff with their own computers, their screen name should be the same as their email, esherwood in my case. For shared computers, they should indicate the location and purpose of the computer, for example VACircDesk, VACircIsland, VASecurity, VAInfoDesk1, and so on. I think the benefits of this method of communication are obvious, especially when you consider the inconspicuousness of it.
Suppose that you are on the circulation island desk and a patron asks if the library is offering help with tax returns soon, and you have no idea. You could send the patron to the information desk and tell them to ask the librarians. You could call your supervisor and ask, but perhaps he or she won't know the answer and will have you call some one else. All the while, the patron is waiting, hearing all of this, and starting to loose faith in the library's ability to keep their staff informed. Or, rather than making the patron run around looking for the answer, or having a phone-athon at the desk, you can say "Let me check on that for you," to the patron, then send an IM to your supervisor asking "When do we start offering help with tax returns? Are their any fliers for this yet?" Copy and paste the message to the info desk, telephone info, information services, as many people as you need to in order to track down the answer. In just a few seconds time, you could ask every librarian in the district if you wanted to. All the while, the patron may just think you are searching some master calender.
I think every library employee who has ever been on desk can think of at least one situation where they were asked a question they did not have the answer to, and had to send the patron somewhere else because they weren't even sure of whom they should call to ask. Don't you think it would make us look more organized and helpful to our patrons, if we could retrieve the answer for them rather than sending them away to ask somebody else?
There are those who would say that instant messaging is too easily used for socialization and it would be more of a distraction than anything else. I strongly disagree. I think that the key to using instant messaging effectively in the library proper training and clear, concise boundaries. If you hold a workshop demonstrating when instant messaging is appropriate and when it is not, I believe a vast majority of the staff will be respectful of their boundaries. I think the only people who will not be respectful of the rules are those that have difficulty not abusing their privileges regardless of what the privileges are.
I guess my stance is, that ultimately, the technology can not be blamed for the bad intentions of the user. Instant messaging could be a very valuable tool for libraries.

Spell with flicker

I experimented with some fun flickr mashups today and particularly likely Spell With Flickr. I'm reminded of when I would make collage notes as a kid, without all the painstaking effort of cutting out interesting letters from magazines and gluing them in place. A nice feature about is that you can click individual letters of the words you generate to change them. This way you can swap out letters that you aren't crazy about without losing the ones that you think are awesome. Pretty spiffy.

Just a Christmas photo for you all

The Christmas Trees
Originally uploaded by Arnold Pouteau's

Have yourselves a merry little Christmas.

7.5 lifelong learning habits

So, I am working on the discover 2.0 program. I'm hoping that this will give me inspiration for some new interactive way to communicate supply needs district wide and within the purchasing department. Also, since my ultimate career goal is in Library Science, it's good to maintain some focus on what's being talked about in the information world.

The first step in this process was to examine the habits of life long learning.

I think these all come fairly natural to me, specifically, accepting responsibility for my own learning. The one I probably neglect the most is using technology to my advantage. When I learn a new technology, I will sometimes reevaluate processes that I already know to determine whether the new technology can make them more efficient. However, when I am in the process of learning a new process, I can sometimes be too narrow sighted to look at the technology options available to me.