Thing 7: Web 2.0 Communication Tools

This Thing deals with communication tools.

Email: Where I work, we've been using our current email system (Microsoft Outlook) since 1999. I have some emails (meeting minutes, etc.) from our previous email system going back to the early Nineties. Outlook has more features than our previous system (All-in-1, I think) - folders, good searching.) We use email a lot at work, for communication and reporting. I haven't used many other systems, but I've reached an OK meeting-of-minds with Microsoft on this. We have an external spam filter that is slow to load, and seems to change its settings every few weeks (you know this when a email from someone you need to hear from gets caught there.) It can only display 1000 messages at a time, so if you don't check every day, it can take you awhile to figure out just how much is in there. I would say it improves productivity as a convenient way to share the same message with many people, plus we can save it in a central location for use later (for example, for minutes, why did we decide to do something a certain way?)

My personal email disappeared last summer, while we were on vacation. Our provider did an upgrade, and my stuff went poof. (Needless to say, my personal tech support-spouse's account with the same provider was fixed within hours. Since he is one of two people that actually might READ my blog, I'll just add, hi, dear!) A few months ago I got a Yahoo Mail account because I had to register for something within Yahoo for my work, but I haven't really used it yet.

Instant Messaging (IM): We've been using IM for reference for about a year and a half. We started with AOL, then GAIM/Pidgin, now we're pretty much using Meebo. We set up accounts and practiced in-house for awhile before we started offering it as a service. We have divided responsibility for checking IM between two of our libraries, with whoever is covering the reference desk also covering IM (we also have an evening supervisor who covers late night.) Some questions I've had are quick ones (where do I find my barcode? do you have this journal?), but some are complex enough that I ask the person if I can email them back (I had a question like that last week, that turned into a lengthy consultation.) Meebo doesn't always notify us when there's a question; maybe we need to check some settings.

Text Messaging (SMS - Short Message Service): We don't offer text messaging yet in my library (no one has pushed for it, so far.) Hmmm. Let's see if I can figure out how to do this on my cell phone (someone sent me a text message at a conference last month, but I had never used that feature on my phone!) ***** OK, I've sent a text message, and found where the other one is. It took too many keystrokes for me to figure out (someone said to me, "you're phone doesn't have many keys, does it? I'll hope it's the phone, and not me.) I wouldn't say that I'm an "active" user of these services, but I regularly cover IM as part of my job.

Web Conferencing: Oh, yeah. I've done Minitex webinars, vendor webinars, OPAL once or twice, ACRL, Learning Times, etc. I even did a presentation for some of my colleagues once that we recording in Breeze, so that people could watch it later. Recently I've attended "Teaching Old Services New Tricks" and "Best Practices in Online Reference Services" (both from Minitex.) While I don't have my notes handy, I recall that the "Best Practices" session had several useful tips. Webinars are very convenient. I'm more likely to do something online (if the price is reasonable) than schlep somewhere else to do it.

More: we used Google Groups in May to discuss "discovery layer" options in our library consortium's online catalog. I'm going to pass on Twitter right now; I heard on public radio this morning that they're having some problems right now (and I've spent enough time on this Thing as it is!)

Since I don't think I linked to this earlier, for my two regular readers, here's more information on 23 Things on a Stick.