Thing 11

IMing. I used to do IM on yahoo ALL the time when it first came out. However I have not IMed in awhile, except for the chat that you can do on facebook. I found IM to be annoying in a social setting, but I think it would work great in a library system setting. I think this is a great way for staff to communicate with each other - especially when they are all housed in a big building or have different branch locations. It is so much less time consuming than sending an email. I also would love to have an online reference using instant message. I think people are much more likely to do an IM than send a generic email to the web manager. Reference librarians on IM have the opportunity to give somewhat instant responses which compared to an email can take at least 24 hours for a response. To me, this seems a lot more welcoming to patrons also.