Thing 7, Communication Tools

This is where I really start to feel like a lacky! While I use email all the time at home, I have never used IM, TM or SMS. Mostly it has been because our cell phones have never been that great and we usually are trying to keep costs down on phone bills. I do have a few friends who text back and forth on occasion, but I don't seem to be the only one who isn't doing it on a regular basis.

I am intrigued with the idea of using these technologies in a work setting. I can especially see how IM could be very useful at an academic library where most of their users would be frequent IMers and having quick access to a librarian through IM would probably appeal to them. For our smaller public library I'm not sure there would be as much use. Especially since you would have to have someone online at all times to be there for those messages. Maybe a metropolitan area would have more patrons using IM? It seems that TM would have the same issues for our library.

Web conferencing would be bennificial if you could afford to keep up with all the techonology needed for it. (And for all I know our library already does this to an extent). I was excited to see the MINITEX Webinars. What a great way to orient new employees or develop current staff. (Ann, do you use these in Austin?) My guess is that keeping everyone up to date on using the technology in order to participate in the webinars might be problematic for smaller libraries.