Thing 7: Communication Tools

Describe how your library uses email. Has it improved productivity?
We have 13 librarians on various campuses, so we use e-mail frequently. When I want to request an intercampus loan, I e-mail the other librarian instead of using our web-based ILL system. (It's much faster to e-mail.) We also use it for sharing documents, such as the agendas for our bi-weekly team calls. However, our e-mail was getting bogged down, so for somethings we use IM, and for others we use a blog.

We have an Ask the Librarian e-mail feature on our library homepage. It generally works smoothly, but sometimes students e-mail over the weekend when we're closed or after hours and need instant help for an assignment that's due before we could possibly respond.

Share your thoughts on online reference using some of the other Web 2.0 communication tools.
Just this week, my library has started an Ask a Librarian IM through Meebo. In fact, I'm on my first shift while I'm writing this. I got a question and was on a roll, but the patron navigated away from the page and we got disconnected. The whole experience reminded me of the search engine Chacha which has guides who recommend websites in an IM format. When I used Chacha, I liked the personal interaction. It was nice to know that I wasn't stranded in cyberspace with my questions.

Which OPAL or MINITEX Web conference (Webinar) did you attend? How was it? What do you think o this communication tool?
I've attended a number of webinars on various topics. The biggest hassle has been finding a place where I can use the speakerphone or the speakers on the computer. I have admininstrator rights on the computer at my desk, so I can run webinars there, but at times I need to find a different location so I can attend a webinar. It gets frustrating when I cannot log in to the webinar because I can't install Flash, etc.

My college offers many courses and programs online. I think that the addition of webinars (live or recorded) and IM with instructors would increase the feeling of connection between students, their classmates, and their instructors.