WML Tech Updates

Jenny Levine had a great post today on communicating with library users, whether in-person, on the phone, IM, texting, or just changing the status of your IM so people can easily tell whether or not you are available.

I talked with my colleague Cynthia just the other day about this, and how we both change our status in Trillian quite regularly. Unfortunately, only a couple other WML library staff use IM, and they use different clients like AIM, Yahoo, or MSN. Heck, even LITS set up an in-house client (Exodus) to test, but it’s never been announced or promoted to all the libraries for use, nor do they intend to advertise it. They say it’s up to the directors of the individual libraries to determine whether or not to implement it. So I guess if I am really adamant about using IM in WML, I need to make a convincing case to our director. We need to be on the same page internally before we even attempt to do IM reference interactions with library users. But wouldn’t it be cool if I could IM with any of my colleagues throughout the Heard Library system, many of whom I need to interact with regularly because of committees and project teams? And do you know anyone not in favor of reducing the amount of email we get?

I personally communicate with my colleagues in a number of ways. Some people only respond to email, but I have several colleagues throughout the Heard Library system that I communicate with via Facebook, IM via Exodus, IM via Trillian, and even SMS texting. And with some people, it’s just easier to call. But one thing Jenny said really hit me.

“…it’s important to do the cliche and “think outside of the box” of how we ourselves might view communication. Even when we do focus groups or informal surveys, it tends to be with library users, who might not be that different from us. Therefore, we might miss patterns like these that show a shift in how the outside world communicates.”

I think it is important that we keep in mind how other people communicate and want to be communicated with. I know some reference librarians that when they get an instant message, or even an email, they insist that the user come into the library because the librarian thinks it’s easier to explain how to find something or use a particular resource. But there are so many tools out there that can help the patron just as much as an in-person interaction. We could be doing screencasts, mini podcasts, creating interactive tutorials, adding the info to a wiki or a research guide. I am sure other people besides myself get tired of answering the same questions over and over again. But I think our users like having options on how they not only find information, but having options in how they interact with us as well.

The person who emailed a reference question to a librarian - she emailed because either it was inconvenient, she didn’t want to come into the library, or she didn’t want to talk to a person. Isn’t customer service about giving people the type of service they want, not what we want? Why do we present to our users so few options of interacting with us when the communications possibilities are almost endless and continually expanding?

Holy smokes! I read my feeds pretty regularly.  And each day I learn something new, and some days, I learn a whole heck of a lot!   I’m amazed at how fast many web technologies are radically growing, evolving, and improving the way we interact with the web and with one another. But this post (rather, the technology itself) just got my mind racing about the possibilities. Read on.

On the Library Garden blog, there was a post about a new widget called YackPack that works like a walkie-talkie. You can talk to individuals or groups of people.

This fun widget allows you to very easily put voice on any type of Web page, with no configuration or registration to do, no software to download, no money to spend—just one “push-to-talk” button widget embedded on your site and you have a web walkie-talkie for live voice chat from any Web page.

The folks at Library Garden also talked about other technologies too, but the potential for having a talk button on a library website (and maybe on every research guide, database details page, help page, etc.) is amazing!  Users could be using Meebo where they can just IM a librarian without having to download, install, or have an IM client at all.   But with YackPack, they could just talk to a librarian.  Here’s a little video that they had linked off their page.  The video shows you how to add the little widget to a wiki.  They use PBwiki in this example, but you can plop it on any type of webpage.  How cool is that?

Voice chat… the next big thing?

They do talk about other technologies in this post, and overall, this is an excellent blog to be reading regularly if you aren’t already doing so.  They always have engaging, fun content that will keep you coming back for more.