IM @ Your Library

At CIL, Aaron Schmidt and Michael Stephens gave a presentation on Instant Messaging. Now they have co-written an article entitled IM me for Library Journal on that very same subject. They both have very strong opinions on the subject (as I indicated on my presentation writeup) about the fact that we as Librarians need to be in the space that our patrons are using (regular commercial IM products) rather than waiting for them to come to us with the expensive web-based proprietary virtual reference products that we have been buying. I expect that view will be somewhat controversial, but I think they are exactly right. You can see how the libraries where Aaron and Michael work have implemented their ideas. And if you simply can’t live without co-browsing, Michael has been experimenting with Jybe.