Thing 7 - Web 2.0 Communication Tools

Describe how your library uses email. Has it improved productivity?
The staff at our library use email to communicate with each other and with the rest of the college: faculty, staff and students. Many of us store important messages for future reference, and retrieve them using the search feature or a sorting feature.

Our library uses Outlook email, with the feature that alerts us to incoming messages. I believe this feature can be turned off, but so far, we have all left it on. Some might argue that this decreases productivity by providing random interruptions to workflow, but I would argue that it adds variety to workflow. I typically enjoy answering emails as soon as I receive them, so that I know that task is done and I can move on to other things.

Share your thoughts on online reference using some of the other Web 2.0 communication tools.
I think online reference is a good idea, if it will be used by the students here. One important principle of online reference is to go where the students are. It would be helpful to do some kind of survey of the student body to determine which online Web 2.0 tools they already use, and then to incorporate those into our reference services.

Are you an active user of text messaging, IM, or other communication tools?
I do not currently use text messaging, because I do not own a cell phone. The only IM I use is within Gmail. When I am logged in to Gmail, I can see which of my friends are also logged in and chat with them. This has been a great tool for keeping in touch with friends from graduate school. Since they all live in Canada, chatting with them in Gmail is a lot less expensive than phoning them.

For this Thing I used Google talk to chat with Dora. It was remarkably similar to chatting within Gmail, and probably just as permanent.

Which OPAL or MINITEX Web conference (Webinar) did you attend? How was it? What do you think of this communication tool?
I viewed the archived MINITEX webinar on OCLC collection analysis. It was a really interesting product! As for the webinar itself, I liked that fact that it was archived, so I could view it in my own timeframe. I was also able to pause the webinar while I ate lunch and then worked at the reference desk, and then come back to it several hours later and pick up where I left off. I've attended and even led live webinars in the past, so I think they are a useful tool for communicating a message to a geographically distant audience.