[Publib] Re: IM at the reference desk

[Andy Barnett]

At home I use Trillian to aggregate my IM accounts. It would be nice if all 
my relatives would agree on one service, but they don't.

When I wanted to start IM at our reference desk, I had a problem with 
Trillian. It required a download and installation, which violated system 
security rules. So... We are using Meebo (www.meebo.com) , which works a 
lot like Trillian, but is entirely web based. Meebo gave us a sound 
notification problem in IE, but not in Firefox. Both are free.

It is sooooooo easy to set up accounts at AIM, Yahoo and MS Messenger and 
access them all with either Trillian or Meebo. Millions of teenagers do 
it.  It is good practice for staff, which should be developing these 
skills. No, you will not get thousands of IMs a day. In fact, you will 
probably have to practice talking to yourself for a couple months before 
much use develops.

If it was expensive or a lot of work, I would say wait, but since it is 
simple and free, I would suggest going ahead yesterday. As suggested, you 
may find your best use is internal or interlibrary. Wish we had it 
throughout the system.

Andy Barnett, Asst. Director				www.mcmillanlibrary.org
McMillan Memorial Library
490 East Grand Ave.						715-423-5144 (phone)
Wisconsin Rapids, WI  54494					715-423-2665 (fax)
	
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
      -  Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929 - 1968