Library Voice

I am a little late with this, but WordPress 1.5 was released last week. I updated two of our library blogs on Sunday in about an hour. The directions offered by Podz made my upgrades a snap. I followed everything to a “T” and it worked flawlessly. Now I simply have to find time to upgrade this blog and a few others. Hopefully by the end of the week, all five of my WordPress blogs will be up to date.

If you haven’t upgraded and don’t want to, I encourage you to reconsider. The new interface is really slick, and the spam blacklist alone should merit a second look from many. I’ll post more about the new WordPress when I have a little more time to get under the hood.

I had another IM reference interaction tonight. The really cool thing about this particular interaction is that it was someone who had IMed me about a month ago. While business is a little slow, it’s nice to know that I am at least getting repeat customers.

I first put my IM profiles on my contact information page about six months ago. However, I did not have any business at all. That all changed when I put the IM profiles on my Business Blog. Traffic has picked up considerably since then, and eight in the last month is a pretty good start.

After delivering library instruction to several first-year business classes, I gave the students a short survey to fill out. Most of the questions were aimed to provide feedback about the instruction session. The last question was about instant messaging usage. I asked:

If you use instant messaging (IM), which service do you use? If you have more than one IM account, please indicate which one you use the most.

Of the 138 respondents:
89.1 % use AIM
.7% use MSN
1.4% use Yahoo! IM
.7% use ICQ
1.4% use another service
and 6.5% don’t use instant messaging.

While this was not necessarily the most scientific survey, it does show that AIM appears to be the client of choice for this small sample of freshmen. Also, in the last month I have had seven students contact me personally via IM. All of those who contacted me were using AIM.

Personally, I am not a big fan of AIM, or of AOL in general. I would much rather use Yahoo!’s IM service exclusively, because I appreciate the Yahoo! Messenger’s features and lack of ads. However, I continue to start up both sevices each morning, because our patrons(and perhaps the rest of the world) are using AIM as their primary IM client. And, as always, the customer is always right.

Sarah at Librarian in Black and Michael at Tame The Web have both posted some updates on their libraries’ Instant Messaging reference programs. Both services seem to be returning excellent numbers and are excellent examples of reaching out to the patrons. Both libraries are supporting the big three clients (AIM, Yahoo! IM, and MSN Messenger), which means that there really should be no one left out. Michael is even supporting Apple’s client, iChat.

Their numbers and success are encouraging (or perhaps overwhelming) to folks who may be thinking about starting a similar service. Our library is fortunate to be a member of OhioLINK, which offers a web-based chat service. We are able to staff a seat for our institution during most hours of operation. As mentioned in a previous post, I have made my Yahoo! and AIM screen names available to students at our university in addition to this service. They can find my screen names on my Business Blog, as well as under my library contact information. My hopes are that if they would like to contact me directly, this would be a great way to do so. CurrentlyI have no set hours of opearation as I can’t afford to dedicate a block of time just yet. However, I am available at all times while I am at my desk, so provided I am not in a meeting, teaching a class, or at the ref desk, I’ll be able to answer a question. Currently I am only supporting AIM and Yahoo! but that may change after I get the results of a survey I am doing.

During the first week of this quarter, I had the opportunity to market this idea to 80 business students during an overview of library resources. The last thing I show the students in every class is the business blog and my contact information, and I empasized the IM service in the last few classes that I have taught. During the second week of the quarter, I had six IM interactions in seven days. Not bad, but since then, all has been quiet. I have another round of classes to teach during the month of February, so perhaps this will stir up some more business. I guess we’ll wait and see.

There is no better way to describe this than to give a play by play. This is sort of how it happened as I have ad-libbed a little here and there to make it a little more intersting. And the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Jim, Bill, and I are having a conversation over our cubicle walls about blogs.
Jim observes that the word “blog” is a very ugly word.
Bill says, “Yeah, it sounds like that monster in Lord of the Rings.”
“Which one?” asks Jim.
“The one that Gandalf fought at the end of the first book. Where we were left hanging about what happened to him,” Bill explained. “I think the dwarves called it ‘Darrien’ or something.”
“Wasn’t that thing a dragon of some sort?” I ask.
Laura, Jim’s student assistant, chimes in, “Just Google It and find the answer.”

I start to type something in the Firefox search box for Google, but can’t quite think of what to type. How do I phrase monster thingy that defeated Gandalf in the first book/movie of the Lord of the Rings whose name, according to Jim, is just as ugly as the word ‘blog’? Instead, I turn to Wikipedia, which is a first for me. I had looked it over a couple of times before, but never to look for actual information.

Once there, I type ‘Lord of the Rings’, and then click ‘Go’. I look at the Search button as well, but ignore it for the time being. I still haven’t quite figured out what the difference is, but I’ll look into that later. ‘Go’ results reveal an article about the Lord of the Rings. I scroll down a bit, and in the Contents I click on a link to the storyline. Then I follow a link to The Fellowship of the Ring. At the end of the short synopsis, I discover the name of the monster whose name sounds like ‘blog’. It’s Balrag. And following the link for Balrag results in a page containing more information that I ever cared to know about the monster.

After my first use of Wikipedia, here are my thoughts. Would I put my English paper on the line and only use Wikipedia articles for my sources? Absoulutely not. There have been plenty conversations around the net and on listservs about the authority (or lack there-of) of the Wikipedia. However, I believe this is one particular case (and I am sure there are many more) that knowing about the Wikipedia and using it sure proved useful. I saved a little time as the actual time it took to find the information was much less than it has taken to read this post. I also learned a little bit more about this collaborative, free, web resource. Also, Bill, Jim, Laura, and I will all sleep better knowing that the monster thingy that defeated Gandalf in the first book/movie of the Lord of the Rings whose name, according to Jim, is just as ugly as the word ‘blog’ is Balrag.

The folks over at Advanced Business Blogging are doing a series called 21 Applications of Business Blogs for Small Business Growth. Over the next 21 days they will be posting a new idea about how blogging can help your business. They are going to look at 13 external applications of blogs, as well as 8 internal applications. In many cases, if you simply substitute the word “library” for the word “business”, many of the points offered are very relevant to the business of libraries.

The first tip is to use a blog as an FAQ page:

The native organization feaure of blogs that puts the newest post at the top of the page makes it easy to find the most recent questions. And the built in navigation of blog software using categories makes a FAQ business blog more intuitive than a forum for most users. Combine these two features with the right strategy and you�ll have a powerful, convenient, and interactive FAQ resource that not only answers questions for your clients, but also becomes an intuitive online learning resource for your products or services.

Many libraries are already using blogs in this way for internal communications. Our Reference Blog, as discussed in a previous post, serves as an FAQ page for our reference staff and students. Our staff can look at the page, view the most recent post, and be prepared to face the issue or question of the day.

The comments feature of blogs might be particularly useful in this area as well. If the question in the FAQ page is not answered satisfactorily, then a reader of the page can comment and ask a more direct question. The question could then be answered in another comment, or in another blog post. Because the question was posted as a comment, other readers who might have had the same question will know that the question is being addressed, or perhaps this will raise additional questions.

I originally set up my Business Blog to serve as sort of an online FAQ. Since many of the students that I deal with are all working on very similar projects, sometimes it is useful (and much easier on me) to post some hints online. Now I don’t tell the students the page numbers of books that have the particular statistic that they need, I just point them to appropriate resources for the project. This saves them time and in turn, it saves me from answering the same question over and over again. When I first set up the blog, I had lofty dreams that this would be a very interactive resource. I imagined that business students could post comments about what resources worked for them, or perhaps suggest an entirely different resource. I had hoped that they might ask questions in the comments, which I could answer in the comments or another post. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. While the blog has gotten a lot of use, the comments feature has not been used at all. Unless, of course, all my students are doing projects on texas hold-em online poker.