As I earlier mentioned, I attended the IM Reference Pre-Conference of Computers and Libraries, which was taught by Amanda Etches-Johnson of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and have since become obsessed with seeing BCPL's journey into this next phase of customer service and reference wonderfulness!
So, here's the "Sales Pitch" [PDF] that Amanda gave for IM Reference:
- While Virtual Reference Software (like the stuff we use to do AskUsNow) is awesome, it has numerous limitations on both the librarian and customer's end. In my opinion, chat reference is equivalent to leaving your house to go to the library, walking up to the information desk, filling out a form with your question and standing in line to wait for someone to answer it.
- According to Pew Internet: 69% of Teens use IM multiple times a week and about 1 in 5 teens use IM as the main way to communicate with friends.
- It's free!
1 comment:
Meebo does seem like the way to go if we do this. That way, anyone who's on would be able to monitor an assortment of IM venues in one shot. And it does seem to work for us.
We'll need to talk about this to see if its somewhere that we really want to put our energy. If we do it, we want to be sure we can support it!
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