[ILL-L] chat for ILL?

[Denise L Montgomery]

Jen,

We've used Meebo in our Reference department for years, but we've just 
abandoned it within the past week in favor of Pidgin 
(http://pidgin.im/). We've only been working with Pidgin this past week 
but we love it, since it allows all of us in Reference to be logged in 
so any of us can catch a client, it supports numerous IM systems, and 
it alerts you with a noticeable noise and a pop-up box so you won't 
miss it. (When we were using Meebo at the desk, it didn't pop-up, and 
we often did not hear the sound, so we missed some chat clients, which 
wasn't doing our system much good in terms of giving it a good 
reputation for service. 

Plus, it allows us to chat to each other easily, which is a plus since 
some of us have offices located in other parts of the building.

The one drawback: initially it only worked on Explorer, and it took a 
while for one of our librarians to get it to work on Mozilla.

                       Denise Montgomery
                       Valdosta State University Library

Jen Stutesman wrote:


>Hi all,
>Since I manage 2 different depts on two different floors, I use Yahoo 
>Messenger to chat with my ILL folks downstairs, one of which is hearing 
>challenged. Does anyone else use chat software in some way in their 
>library that they want to share? It doesn't just have to be for ILL - 
>please email me off list if you use chat software for anything in your 
>library. Please tell me 1) What you use it for. 2) The "underlying 
>rules" for such use. (i.e., if you use it at the Reference Desk, what 
do 
>you do if someone walks up in person? Or, do you have trouble with 
>students chatting at the desk and not waiting on patrons?) 3) What kind 
>you use - Meebo, Yahoo, AIM...
>Thanks!
>-jen
>
>-- 
>"Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our 
enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish 
all the materials for our future support and defense." -- Abraham 
Lincoln, February 22, 1842
>
>Jen Stutesman
>Manager, Circ, ILL and Media
>University of AK, Fairbanks
>jen.stutesman at uaf.edu
>907-474-2676
>
>
>
>
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