Thing 11: IM and Libraries

First off I read Marshall Breeding's article on IM and Libraries. He is insightful as ever. What strikes me most is this: this article was written in December, 2003!! Here we are 4 years later and still talking about how wonderful it can be - when it's actually old news by now.

I am a big fan of IM. Back in December, 2003, I was using it in a corporate environment. In fact, as an IBM employee back in 2001 I was IM'ing my colleagues - all for business purposes to be sure... Anyway, we used the official IBM product called SAMETIME, which took care of the authentication and security issues prevalent with other products. I must admit that at first it took some getting used to. Once I started working VO (virtual office) i found i couldn't live w/o my IM. I'd be at home working and when i'd get stuck with a particular piece of code, i'd just open up that IM window and have all of my colleagues at my disposal. (no, not in the disposal...)

and if someone wasn't answering an IM, i'd send it anyway, knowing they were online. i knew i'd get a response quicker to a pending IM than to an email.

what was especially helpful was to have conferences via IM. all 5 of my team members would be contributing to the same discussion - each of us in a different zipcode.

then once i was hooked on the instant access to my "buddies", i decided to use it for personal reasons. Feb 2004 found me in france and missing my friends and family. i wasn't ready then to hop on the SKYPE bandwagon, but i was ready to load AOL IM (AIM) on my machine. that was great. still had to figure in 6 hours time difference, but it was great to have FREE conversations that could last as long as i could type.

note: since then i've gotten disgusted with the hog that is AIM and refuse to have it on my machine! thank heavens for web-based IM tools.

so that's my history with IM. now that i'm in a library setting, what do i think about IM for libraries?

go for it! i'm so glad we finally got virtual reference hours. it's a shame there were so many hoops to be jumped through, but hopefully we'll find it was worth it. i think we shouldn't limit the hours to those when kids are doing homework. i think we'll find that many adults IM too! even Pew studies indicated back in 2004 that 4 out of 10 online americans use IM. no doubt that ratio has gone up in the last several years. needless to say, we'll have to be staffed for that eventuality - no small feat, that. isn't it a shame we let staffing and technology "concerns" get too much in the way??

i believe IM is not only great for communicating with patrons, but also for staff to staff communications. it's just like email. sure, we survived fine without it before we had it. but now that we we have email, can you imagine life without it? same would be true for internal IM'ing.

and another thing - i found that by IM'ing my colleagues (in my former life), cleaning up my inbox and sent folders was alot easier. you IM someone with a simple question and get a quick answer immediately. close the window and you're done. via email, however, you've got 2 more emails that you've got to manually delete. if an organization is really concerned about email space, they should consider implementing IM on the intranet!

and for what it is worth: i wonder if mr. breeding still stands by his prediction that email will eventually take second chair to IM'ing. same sentiment echoed in the AP-AOL IM Trend survey. personally, i don't see it happening any time soon! i happened to notice that the AP-AOL trend just has one category for adult - ages 19 and up. seems to me there's a big difference in online habits of a 19 year old versus a 40 year old versus a 60 year old! maybe the 19 year old will be always accessible online and therefore 24x7 IM'ing is fine for him. as for me, however, i prefer being offline a good bit of the time, therefore i'll stick with Email which kindly waits until I'm ready for it.