Thing #5

Instant messaging.

Background
I had never used the Internet until sometime in 2000 when some of my high school instructors started encouraging its use. But my poor, Catholic high school didn't have it on site so I went to the local public library often and used the computer there. The library blocked chat rooms and instant messengers so I didn't really use IM until the summer of 2000 when my parents broke down and got us dial up Internet at home.

I started on Yahoo because I liked a lot of the chat rooms there and the Yahoo game sites. Then I started using MSN messenger because it turned out that a lot of my friends had that. I then went to college and kept using MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger but met some people there who were using AIM. So naturally I got an AIM account as well. I found out about Trillian at some point and started using it to manage all of my chatting. I was a pretty intense IM user for the first few years. My interest sort of waned though and many of my regular friends I chatted with stopped using it as much. Now I rarely use it. I mostly just stick with Gmail chat to talk to my husband every now and again during the day. We've always chatted a lot because in the beginning we had a long distance relationship and all of our regular interaction was through IM as opposed to phone calls. And for the record, I'm not a person who uses text messages because of the cost. And I hate most abbreviated "net speak" phrases.

Pros
IM has a lot of advantages. It's easy to use once you start. I even got my dad into it when I went away to college. We would chat on MSN once a week and now he uses it to chat with one of his friends he doesn't see as much now that they are both retired.

It's much more dynamic than email. Chat is just like a conversation except you can't see and hear the other person. But it is faster and more interactive than email. Sometimes email becomes kind of awkward when you are trying to iron out something complicated. IM makes it easier to discuss detailed things.

Now that things like Trillian and Meebo exist the compatibility issues have pretty much ceased. It's now not as much of a hassle to have friends using different IM platforms. IM is even on cell phones now so you can still keep in touch on the go.

Cons
I can't really think of that many disadvantages anymore. Many of the programs now don't even have to be downloaded. You can chat from the browser so you don't have to install anything on your computer and that is a plus if you use multiple computers.

Perhaps the biggest issue would be teaching patrons and fellow staff to use it. If most of your libraries' patrons are older or not technologically inclined the interest may be limited. But even if your library has mostly older patrons I think trying it out on the site would be useful because maybe it would spark people's interest and willingness to learn it. Perhaps some patrons would find it impersonal, I'm not sure. Also, teaching library staff who have never IM'ed before might be a challenge. Here, our circulation and reference habits are pretty ingrained and I'm afraid some staff might feel that starting up an IM reference service might add to our workload when perhaps it would just reallocate some of the calls we currently get and maybe replace a few of the in person reference sessions.

Another basic concern would be having to keep an eye on it and not forget about it as phone calls and patrons roll in. If the person keeping tabs on your library's Meebo suddenly walks away and doesn't update their status, patrons could feel ignored or mislead by your online presence. I could see this as being a potential issue at a library when there are few staff members and one gets into doing something away from their desk when they are supposed to be manning the chat based reference. I frequently get called away from what I am doing with little notice or I end up trying to help 2 people at once when I'm the only one on duty, so I would have to be trained to remember to set my status to "be right back" on the Meebo client.

My library and IM
I had never heard of Meebo until a few months ago and now it seems it is on every academic library's webpage that I visit. I'm going to push to have it added to our website but that will be several months off because our site is heavily controlled by the web development company and they like to make every department's page very similar in design and layout and this just might break the mold but I think we can make a good case to have it added especially when our "competitors" have it on their sites.

I hope our patrons would use it. The traditional age students here are pretty saavy with things like Facebook and Myspace and chatting online. I work mostly at night and get a few reference calls here and there but I'm sure more people are at home or in the on campus housing using our resources. We do get the occasional question via our generic library email account. Few students come in at night so I'd be curious to see if we offered IM reference if people would take advantage of it from home because with Meebo they could "see" that we are around to help them. It could increase our visibility by showing on on site that a live person is around. They might know the library is open but not want to come in or even make the effort to call us. I will be more than happy to test drive the service for us in the evenings.

If I was a patron I'd probably use it if I had a question. I prefer email or written contact to phone contact so for a somewhat introverted soul like myself IM reference would be very useful.