http://www.ncpl.info/departments/reference/im.htm
From colleague and workshop participant Stephen Boggs, who is director of New Carlisle Public Library in New Carlisle, IN (at the far west reaches of my county), we get a report of what he’s doing at his library since the “Reinventing Libraries Workshop” This rocks my world.
So far I have set-up three additional IM accounts for the library. Information about or screen names is posted on our main web page @ www.ncpl.info
The accounts were fairly easy to establish, though I have switched to a program called PSI to handle all three accounts instead of managing three different IM programs at once. I’m hoping that kids/adults will see that we are trying to be as approchable as possible, especially since it simply takes just a few clicks to ask a question. I am also going to try to have the staff sign up for IM accounts for quickie questions and general communication instead of using the intercom or waiting for an e-mail reply. It’s easy to do, but people don’t care to “have their cheese moved,” so I need to remember to be patient and supportive when introducing things like this to the staff.
I have also started a blog. It is located at http://ncplinfo.blogspot.com/ The cool thing about it is that I can just use my normal e-mail to post to it. Some ask why do both a blog and a website? Simple. They are two different things. The blog is strictly a list and nothing more, whereas the website is much more structured. I must admit that as I was browsing some library related blogs I was quite put off by what the ALA President had to say about bloggers in general.
Rock On Stephen! I hope the internal IM initiative goes well. Two key words for introducing staff to new technologies: patient and supportive. Some staff will take to it like ducks to the pond, some staff will fight anything that’s new, and some staff fall in between. I’m pondering buy-in a lot these days… it’s important for success in libraries for sure!