Monday, December 31, 2007

Thing 11: IM, I am

I read two of the articles on IMing. I had forgotten that Commodore 64 had a form of IMing back in the day. It was in UNIX and cost extra per minute of use. And I remember it taking minutes to download information in those days, not seconds! Ah, the patience we old folks had then.
Fairly interesting to note:
College librarians promoted IM to check meeting times in lieu that old fashioned instrument, the phone. Seems having that IM square in the corner of your screen encourages multi-tasking.
Some libraries have a Reference IM desk open for business. An opening time of 24/7 seems to be a pie in the sky. Yet, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. seemed to work for student's homework questions.

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