Thing 7 - Web Communication Tools

I have a feeling this post may get really long, so I apologize in advance.

I grew up in a world with the internet, so most of the web communication tools in this thing were already at least a little familiar to me. I have used e-mail since middle school and was a bit confused by the comment in the "thing" explanation about e-mail existing before the internet. Not really sure how that would've worked, but anyway..... In our library we do have computer classes showing people how to set up an e-mail address and how to do the basics (writing messages, opening messages, forwarding, replying and attachments if the class can handle it) We also have all our overdue notices going out through e-mail. This is not a perfect system because the people w/o e-mail never get notified, but it's something we're working on. We also have an "Ask a Librarian" feature on our webpage.

I used to use IM a lot. I still use it, but not quite as much as I used to. It's helpful to keep in touch with people I went to college with, but who now live far away. I can see good and bad things about using IM for reference. We are not sitting at the reference desk all of the time (we wander and help people on the book floor) so if someone IMs us, we may not notice the message is there until it's too late and they've signed off. Another thing I think we'd have a problem with is the language. Although I use IM quite a bit, I don't use the Instant Message language (I'm really weird and have been known to use semi-colons [and I'm not talking about emoticons]) I couldn't understand half of what was said in the video!! I fear that we would need to have a dictionary sitting by our computers at all times in order to communicate.

Texting is a communication tool that I don't use very often. Again, it may be because I'm too long-winded and don't use or want to use the abbreviations for things. To me, it seems to take more time than IM or e-mail, but if someone used it all the time that wouldn't be so. One thing that is good about Text is the convenience of always having it with you. I saw that future versions of Millennium will have text capabilities built in to notify people of their holds. That would be really cool!!!

Whenever I think about web conferencing I'm reminded of the episode of "The Office" where the boss thinks he's going to a cool party in New York, but it's actually a party at their office connected to other offices by webcams. I have taken part in a couple classes that were taught by a person via the web, but that's as close as I've come. I learned in this thing that I have a really hard time absorbing the information in podcasts. There are too many outside distractions, especially if I'm trying to listen to them at work. I think they would be convenient to set up meetings between people in different locations, but it probably wouldn't be my first choice in how to learn information.

Alright, that got really long. Again - I'm sorry.