Thing 7 - Communication

Email and electronic calendars have certainly changed life in the library. Email now allows me to inform everyone on my staff of updates, news, procedure changes, etc., at the same time. No more routing slips -hooray! We get so much more done by sending information by email and only meeting when absolutely necessary.

Reference staff use instant messaging and chat to serve patrons and I hope that our division will begin to use some of these tools after everyone has had a chance to sample them with the 23 Things program. We already get emails from patrons to which we respond. I don't use chat or IM myself (no one to chat with) and texting is beyond my eyesight capabilities but I certainly see uses for them in the library world. If we could receive texting on our work screens it would be another way to give service to our patrons.

I haven't yet attended an OPAL or MINITEX webinar but I've attended a Sirsi webinar. The format is somewhat cumbersome but useful for getting information out to a widely scattered audience. As long as they are short ( 1 hour or less) I think they are handy but much longer than that and you lose the audience.