Zipf-adeedoo-Bob

For Thing 7, 23ThingsonaStick has asked participants to answer the following questions:

• Describe how your library uses email. Has it improved productivity?
• Share your thoughts on online reference using some of the other Web 2.0 communication tools.
• Are you an active user of text messaging, IM, or other communication tools?
• Which OPAL or MINITEX Web conference (Webinar) did you attend? How was it? What do you think o this communication tool?

Uh… well, since I am not a librarian, I thought I might answer these things about my own workplace and I’ll let others judge how they might apply. I’ll also try my hand at drawing parallels, but you may take them with a grain of salt.

My division of the University uses email for two main purposes: 1) to distribute fyi, memos, and information-for-review, and 2) time-insensitive communications for an individual or group of people. This is not absolute, but this is generally the informal understanding. I’ve only worked in this division for about 9 months, so I’m not familiar with a University Outreach without email. But I will say that most people try to keep other forms of communication away from email, as we have an understanding that it may very well be buried among our other time-insensitive communications.

Time-sensitive communications are reserved for voice and instant messaging. IM is big within the organization! Why?… Because a message can be received without being buried in other messages (email), but does not require the halt-everything attention of answering the phone. I can IM someone, and they will respond either immediately or momentarily once they are done with what is in front of them. Before this job, I never used IM, and I still don’t use it in my personal life. However, it is a great benefit at work.

Back to Web 2.0 tools, we do have a new communications and reference tool called the Intranet, with is actually a product called ThoughtFarmer. It is essentially a social-network-meets-blog-meets-wiki system that everyone in the organization has access to. It has several big-picture objectives, including breaking down organizational silos and fostering knowledge transfer. Since it is such a broad tool, it can be an excellent reference (not in the traditional library sense) tool for our organization. However, it is only as effective as its users are active in the system. It cannot capture organizational information and knowledge if users do not create that content in the system. So it is not perfect, but it is much better than anything else I’ve seen to-date.

Lastly, I did not attempt either of the webinar simulations, because I regularly spend a small portion of each week in Cisco Meetingplace (another webinar system). If you have meetings with people in multiple locations, I cannot recommend webinars enough! They are incredibly helpful and the technology has come a long way.