Thing 8 - Communication - Web 2.0 Style

Ah, the wonderful glorious world of IMs (Instant Messaging). AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, Window’s Messager (now Window’s Live) Trillian, Email… my god the list of II (Instant Interruptions) goes on and on!

I remember back in the day of 14.4 modems and dial-up internet trying to configure my my first IM client. You had to know the IP address of the person you were talking too and they had to know yours. I must have spent a hour on the phone with my friend trying to get this thing to work. At the end we were like, “Instant Messaging technologies will never replace phones or email.” Ha, Ha, Ha… omg, was I ever so very wrong. Not only has IMing technology become pervasive on computers, now it’s invaded our phones.

I was an early adopter of IMing… I ran both Aol and Yahoo Messenger because all my friends used different clients. I loved being able to see what people were doing at all hours and bother them with inane messages such as, “rofl, check this link, scareylinkaheadthatwillmakeyouwanttoclawyoureyesout.com” Oh those were the days… before browser hijacking and such… when mystery link clicking was fun and exciting. But I digress…

Now, I don’t even run IM clients at home and I pray to what ever higher powers exist that we never, ever, never run them at work for staff to staff interactions. What use to be fun developed into a constant source of interruptions. I’d get home, eat dinner, hop online and suddenly my computer is filled with 5-6 chat boxes ranging from, “lets get some beers” to “you never IM you mom”. My god, all I wanted to do was check my email and play some video games and suddenly I am latched into 5 conversations going off in different tangents praying to god I am typing the right comments in each box so that everyone I am talking thinks I am just focusing on them. ARRGH!

The constant deluge of email at work I get is more than sufficient for interruptions. I do not need staff empowered with the ability to Instantly Interrupt my daily work load. The comments will start with, “Are you busy?” Well duh, I am at work, so by default I must be busy. I like face time. I want to talk to people face to face. If I wanted to work in an impersonal work environment where all your daily activities is via phone, Web-x, emailing and IMing, I would work for a global corporation not a small library district. I love technology, really I do. I embrace change, really I do. What I don’t like is others thinking they can, Instantly Interrupt me with, “Are you busy?” I’ve been IMing since before there was a “Web 2.0” tag. I’ve been there, done that and am ready to move on to the next great staying in touch tool…. VOIP or whatever. Imagine a world were with the press of a button we can instantly voice chat over the internet without have to dial those annoying numbers or listening to those annoying ring ring tones. Well… okay… Skype still has the ring ring tones… but I love Skype. Now not only can I have 5 voice chats, I can sent them each a IM with, “scareylinkaheadthatwillmakeyouwanttoclawyoureyesout.com”. Ah technology rocks!

BUT… having said all that, I see no reason why we can’t let patrons have access to being able to Instantly Interrupt (err… Message) librarians with questions. It does provide yet another avenue for the twopoinotohs to communicate with us. It increases the relevance of Libraries by increasing our accessibility and there for accessibility to another source of information (Google hasn’t won the interwebs yet). We should be where ever our patrons are. We already support, “Ask a Librarian” in our district. I would be nice if we could offer this on an independent basis too for patrons asking questions about our collection.