[Publib] Re: IM Security Concerns and Volume

[Cynthia Stafford]

Hi Marti-

I participate in a project similar to using "IM"s for reference, but on a large scale.  It is called "Know It Now"- you can visit here for more information- http://www.knowitnow.org/ 

Branches all over Ohio work shifts providing virtual reference via chat.  We found that with good promotion, the service really took off.  It started out far more basic than what you'll see on the website- we found that a lot of younger people used the service, and so we partnered with Tutor.com to provide assistance beyond our "HomeworkNow" service.  The interface had to change in order to keep up with the volume of "callers."

As for security, investing in a good platform will take care of a lot of the security issues, or if you have a firm network with a ton of firewall protection.  The only problem I can see with using an IM service like Yahoo Messenger or AIM is that there are still ways to send little scripts that may not ruin anything, but could cause your computer to spontaneously reboot, etc.  I'm no expert though, but you could probably contact the facilitators of Know It Now to see what they're using.

Best of luck,

Cynthia Stafford
Dayton Metro Library





Message: 4
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:12:24 -0800
From: "Marti Goddard" 
Subject: [Publib] IM security concerns and volume
To: 

Message-ID:
 <740EE94B362EC44DBA40A5E80992AC2406B99F at EXCHANGE2.SF-Library.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On behalf of a Task Force at San Francisco Public Library -
While they are willing to let us experiment with using IM in-house, IT
folks at our library have said they have security concerns related to
implementing IM for reference. If your library offers this service, we
would appreciate hearing about any security problems you have
experienced and how they were solved. 

We'd also appreciate hearing about how many questions you are getting
via IM. Other Bay Area libraries have made soft launches of IM reference
services and they are not finding much demand.

Thanks for any wisdom you can share,
Marti
__________________________________
Marti Goddard, Access Services Manager
San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/557-4557 (voice) 415/557-4433 (tty)
415/557-4531 FAX







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