thing 6 ~ communication tools

I just finished my last college class: "Interpersonal Communication" and technology-enabled communication was never mentioned! I feel that just as this course should probably be updated to reflect new ways people are communicating with one another, so should the role of these technologies in internal and external library communications.

In the 90s, before cell phones and facebook, AOL was used heavily among my people to stay up-to-date on pressing issues, like "spgtti 4 din," "answr math #7?" and "bob iz tooootalllllyy n luv w u." At that time IM was something all it's own; now (in my life at least) as a feature on Gmail and Facebook. In the same way email and social networking sites utilize IM, Polaris could provide internal IMing that clerks, for example, could use to contact one another about moving/canceling/missing holds, checking the lost&found, etc, without having to get up and go to a phone.

I did chat once with a librarian at the IU Lib - I am interested to know how often students use this method and the types of questions they ask. I can imagine it's a lot of "can you summarize the main points of this book?" and "will you tell my group on the 3rd floor I'm going to be late?" At the same time, I think there is a lot of potential for chatting as a way for people to connect to librarians in a very direct and one-on-one way.

The restrictions on text messaging keep me from being anything more than a sporadic user. The cost, maximum length of messages and lack of keyboard have all frustrated me at one time or another. I can see potential uses here at MCPL, for example, bookmobile patrons could be notified of a weather~related closing (I wonder why this came to mind today?) on their cell phones with a mass text.

I like the idea of web~conferencing, especially in the example of larger library systems who want to connect employees from different branches without making people travel - cutting down on paid travel time is good and it's environmentally friendly! Brandon's experience in a classroom connected to other graduate school classroom with a remote teacher also sounds promising ~ struggling with fussy audio does not. Even programming can be done via web~conferencing...people staying at home to "attend" library programming strikes me as odd initially, but it's exactly the kind of boundary~expanding change that Library 2.0 describes.

Overall, I think implementing any of these things is likely to bring in some users that may not have reached out to the library before. There are some people who prefer emailing the Circ Dept, even though they can call while we're open or maintain their account online. The library should accomodate these differences in preferences among patrons and employees alike.

thing 2 ~ lib 2.0

I'm familiar with many of the tools that are part of 23 things as a semi-compulsive internet lurker, but I haven't necessarily had hands-on experience with many of them. I hope to take this opportunity to be a user and not only an observer!

The web 2.0 wiki article was a good place for me to start. It seems that most of the things I do while sitting at a computer are web 2.0-y. I also learned the word 'folksonomy,' which if I am correct in understanding, can be used to describe ThisNext.

Even given my personal use of web 2.0 tools, I find myself being a little stodgy about lib 2.0. I'm afraid a library could exclude some patrons by overly integrating their services with at-home internet use. It's wonderful for a library website to link patrons to information and downloadable materials, but it is the books that are loaned that make a library different than a store or an internet service. See, stodgy!

I must miss college - I was happy to spend some time reading these articles and thinking about these ideas. If you're thinking this means I should just go to library school already, you're not the first : )

thing 1

et voila!