IM and multiple librarians

[Thad Dickinson]

Hi,

Does anyone know of an IM service that will allow multiple librarians to simultaneously monitor the service from different locations? Meebo, for instance, only allows one librarian to be logged into our account at a time. I think the same is true of Trillian, but I can't be certain.

Thanks!
Thad

[Edwin Mijnsbergen]

But with Meebo Rooms, they can all join the same location!
In Dutch reference work we use Chatfone: works brillant, but all in Dutch, sorry...

[Stephen Francoeur]

Yes, that is one way to deal with the issue, but if you want one-to-one conversations then a chat room won't work.

[Stephen Francoeur]

Although on second thought, you could use the chat room like a reference desk and then once you've got a patron you say, "Hey, let's chat one on one...here's my personal IM screen name...connect with there." A bit clunky, but it is possible. When chat reference services first started in the 1990s, some early services tried the chat room approach. It's notable that none of those services (I think) survived in the chat room format.

[Stephen Francoeur]

Nope, there's no tool yet. If someone makes one, you'll see the first flowering of cooperative chat reference using IM.

[Bill Pardue]

This was actually discussed in a presentation at the Collaborative VR conference in Denver. The funny thing was that when the presenter finished describing what would have to happen to IM in order to work in the collaborative environment, it pretty much looked like a chat VR package. What I envision is that the chat VR vendors will make more of an attempt to make their user sides IM-like sooner than IM will evolve into a multi-librarian tool.

[Diana Sachs-Silveira]

My husband has been tinkering with idea and has a rough working system working with Yahoo. I would be happy to show you this if your interested in it.

[Thad Dickinson]

Thanks, Diana. I was really just inquiring for a colleague in Canada and I think they've moved on. If your husband's idea coms to fruition, he may strike the gold mine!

Thad

[Brian C. Gray]

The problem is not the tool we use to monitor IM but the providers of the various IM accounts. Most do not allow multiple people to login.

I do not know what environment you work in. My university implemented the Spark IM Client (http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp) and added a customer component. All faculty, staff, and students are on it. It allows to also monitor the external traditional services (but only one librarian at a time can do that). It also allows us to place a logo on our website that brings up a pop-up window were we can interact real time. All the librarians can monitor it, bring in other people, and cobrowse.