“Pidgin4Lib is a customized version of Pidgin. It includes a plugin for support of collaborative IM services. It allows libraries or departments to offer IM services with one public buddy name handled internally by any number of staff members.”
Wow. This is something to definitely check out and play with when I have more time. From the looks of the documentation, it appears to be fairly complicated. However, it looks to be on the right path to solving some of the issues with IM reference. There’s a powerpoint about the project here. Unfortunately, I can’t tell who is working on the project from the wiki. Anybody out there know?
Looks like UNC. Hooray!
Chad, please do keep an eye on it for the rest of us, thanks!
I think you’ll want to contact Pam Sessoms specifically at UNC Chapel Hill.
Thanks to Ken for the heads-up!
Yes, I am a good contact for this. My husband is an excellent programmer (he does not work for the library) and is the brains behind the operation.
This project was put into production in the Fall semester of 2007 at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and NCSU. While it has worked well, there are also some bugs and serious limitations. We’ve stopped developing this particular version, which was peer-to-peer, and now we’re putting efforts into a version built around a Jabber/XMPP server. Management will be done over a web interface.
The first part we’re releasing is a web chat widget (no Flash required). Once that’s stable, we’ll move forward from there to integrate with the queuing/routing pieces from the original Pidgin4Lib.
Interested? We’ll get more organized soon, but for now:
http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/
http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/wiki/LibraryH3lp
Best wishes to all,
-Pam.
update: http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/