CiL: Building Communities with IM

Michael Stephens, Dominican University; Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Ford Memorial Library; and me!

Truth is, I didn’t really blog this session. I still haven’t figured out the art of blogging a session of which I am a part, I can’t seem to get away from the double-edged sword of note-taking assisting in my general comprehension of what’s being said, and the general awkwardness of typing furiously when you’re on stage. Does anyone else find that awkward? I certainly do.

Michael started us off by talking about the results of the Librarians & IM survey he ran a couple of months ago, the results of which are positively fascinating. As I said, I didn’t take notes, so keep your eye on his blog for all the details, he did mention that he’d be posting his slides soon. General summary: IM might be all the talk and rage, but not enough of us are doing it. To use Michael’s words: there is still work to be done.

Aaron was up next and spoke about his experience doing IM at his library (the public library perspective). There’s been excellent uptake within his community and he highlighted some important stuff like the types of questions they receive, a couple of sample interactions (fascinating!), the all-important comparison with traditional virtual reference, and IM buddy lists.

Next up, me – on the academic experience. I took an evidence-based approach this time around, mostly because I’ve been looking forward to giving our log files a good, close read. I think it went reasonably well, here’s the presentation (note: I used S5 for my presentation this time, after months of wanting to use it and not having the time to try something new. I like it & will definitely use it again. Mouse-click anywhere in the main slide area to advance to the next slide or use the navigation that appears in the bottom-right of the screen. Also, the “Ø” in the same area there gives you a stripped-down, printer-friendly version, including extra notes).
[Technorati tag: cil2006]

clomid | nolvadex no prescription | levaquin | sertraline | buy buspar without prescription

Amanda, glad to hear you enjoyed using S5! In addition to clicking the ‘null’ symbol to get the outline, you can also use the “T” on your keynoard to “toggle” between the slide view and the outline view. It flips back and forth between the two views.

Since you’re planning to keep using S5, I’ll just note that I hope to finish S5 1.2 soon, which includes a “notes” window for the presenter that has time-elapsed and countdown timers, and can show presenter notes for each slide in the window.

Sweet! thanks for letting me know, Eric