I was thrilled to wake up this morning to the new release of meebo, complete with chat rooms (just in time for my session – shame I ran out of time & had to skip over it)! There are all sorts of use cases for libraries here, from small group chats with subject specialists or liaison librarians, to chat sessions with a librarian and an IT specialist to help with the tech stuff (we’ve done this in Trillian, using the plain, old “invite” feature). Definitely worth a look if you’re planning an IM reference service!

My second workshop is done, now I get to kick back and enjoy the rest of the show! Thank you to everyone who attended the IM workshop – it was fun and I certainly learned a lot, hope you all did too! For those who there, here are the resources I rushed through at the end of the session:

• IM roadmap
• setting up an IM account
• IM tips for staff
• IM canned messages

And for those of you who gave me your cards for more info about the log script and the stats database we’re using, I’ll be in touch soon!

Again with the poor note-taking since I was up on stage. Clara got our session going by outlining the research she’s been doing with the virtual reference logs for her VR consortium. The part that stood out the most was that her initial assumption, going into the project, was that the co-browsing feature of their VR software (they use tutor.com) would represent the greatest teaching potential, but, in fact, when she reviewed the logs, she found that the chat interaction was where the lion’s share of the teaching/learning happened.  Proof positive! This set the stage nicely for my portion, which focussed on the “virtual teaching moment” in IM. Here are the slides.
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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).
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