Thing 7 - Communication Tools

Email is great - it's a great tool to facilitate communication both within the library and with the outside world. I do really dislike, however, when it is used exclusively within the library INSTEAD of face-to-face communication. Sometimes a phone call or a visit to another desk *is* the best form of communication. But on the whole, email has been a great boost to productivity. It's a way to shoot off a message/ask a question when someone is unavailable in person, it's a way to create a "paper trail" so you don't lose track of something. It's one of the great inventions of the twentieth century!

My problem with email is that I'm on a couple of VERY active lists, and the amount of posts I receive each day is staggering. I could just delete them, but I do get useful information and I hate to just delete unread. So I'm running way, way behind and several times a day I have to scroll through my messages looking for things from "real people." I'm trying very hard to catch up but am also trying to batch the email reading so I'm not constantly turning to it. 

I didn't know a whole lot about IM before reading the "how it works" article, so obviously I've never tried it. The only library application of it that I'm aware of is IM reference service. I think we'd like to try that here once our staffing is improved.<

I also haven't tried text messaging (my cell phone plan does not include it) but I certainly have seen friends use it. It seems a bit cumbersome to me - having to hit number buttons multiple times to get to a particular letter - but I know that people can do it really quickly. I think my library is much more likely to implement IM before doing much with texting.

I've done quite a bit of web conferencing. Some - probably most - has worked really well. Being able to see live demos of a product or get training on an application and at the same time be able to ask your specific questions of someone who really understands the application is invaluable. It's a way we can train many, many more people than we could possibly send to a conference out of town or out of state. But, when web conferencing doesn't work, it's dramatic! There was one notable webinar where about a dozen of our staff people had been freed up to attend, and the Internet connections were soooo sloooow that our screens were about 20 minutes behind what the presenter was talking about! It was a session we had all been really looking forward to - and our library had paid a lot for the webinar - and it was totally useless. When it works, it's absolutely wonderful. When it doesn't, it's pretty frustrating.