INSTANT MESSAGING -- n. A service that alerts users when friends or colleagues are online and allows them to communicate with each other in real time through private online chat areas. With instant messaging, a user creates a list of other users with whom he or she wishes to communicate; when a user from his or her list is online, the service alerts the user and enables immediate contact with the other user. While instant messaging has primarily been a proprietary service offered by Internet service providers such as AOL and MSN, businesses are starting to employ instant messaging to increase employee efficiency and make expertise more readily available to employees (www.microsoft.com/windows/xp/experiences/glossary_h-n.asp).
Some studies suggest that special librarians have been slow to adopt IM. I suppose this is for a few reasons--many of us are tied to our enterprises' systems, which block IM through tight firewalls; many of us haven't hit too many Millennials--that next generation that lives on IM; and some of us haven't seen the usefulness of it yet. Then again, many of us have adopted it in our personal lives for friends, clubs, kids, and grandkids.
It's time to look again. Many corporations have discovered the competitive advantage of this tool. Indeed it's tightly integrated into many corporate applications now. Reuters and Microsoft have announced that they will be providing safe IM for financial transactions like stock trades.
Here we go again! Yet another technology to learn. But this one is easy! Do you need a "why"? Here's why: E-mail is just sending letters and memos faster than our grandparents did. IM is having electronic conversations--it's the text version of a phone call--not a letter. You need both letters and phones. You need both e-mail and IM. It's that simple, really. Imagine your work without a phone. That's what being without IM will be like. I believe that, in the end, IM will transform our culture and behavior, just like phones and e-mail did. It is definitely worth playing with IM and learning how it works. Here are 20 reasons for special librarians to love IM:
1. It is free
There are a whole load of instant messaging services: mIRC, AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger. Check out their Web pages for more detail if you haven't already:
* MIRC [http://www.mirc.com]
* AIM [http://www.aol.ca/alm/index_eng.adp]
* ICQ [http://web.icq.com]
* MSN Messenger [http://messenger.msn.com]
* Yahoo! Messenger [http://messenger.yahoo.com]
It's simple and it doesn't hurt to try it out with a friend, colleague, or student. You'll learn a lot. I think it's fun too. It's just a simple, small download.
2. Trillian by Cerulean
As might be clear from the above list, there are many choices of IM clients. Unfortunately, conversations between different IM clients can be troublesome but not impossible. Although the major IM players are working on interoperability, Cerulean Studios has already developed a free integrator that allows you to simultaneously converse between the competing IM clients. Trillian is a multi-network chat/IM client that currently supports mIRC, AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger.
It supports docking, multi-line edit boxes, buddy alerts, multiple connections to the same medium, a powerful skinning language, easy importing of your existing contacts, skinnable emoticons, logging, global away/invisible features, and a unified contact list. It has a direct connection for AIM, support for user profiles, complete type formatting, buddy icons, proxy support, emoti-sounds, encrypted instant messaging to ICQ and AIM, AIM group chats, and shell extensions for file transfers. It is free for the basic version, and the pro version is only $25 at this writing [http://www.ceruleanstudios.com]. This means that you can easily connect with any client without having to adapt your system to their system.
3. Chance to learn a new skill
Using IM is easy, but it is a specialized skill that needs a little practice to master. It is also a skill that will be needed in an increasing manner in the future to interact with customer service centers, for online shopping, and for business communication. Reuters and Microsoft are developing a secure IM environment for handling financial communication and stock market trading orders. The earlier we get on the bandwagon, the better.
4. Spam-free, sort of ...
This might just be a temporary situation, but viruses and spam for instant messaging are rare. spim n.--Unsolicited commercial messages sent via an instant messaging system. Also: spIM.--spimming pp.--spimmer n.--antispim adj. Spim is also sometimes called instant spam or IM marketing. While it is nowhere near as prevalent as spam, one must be aware of it. The lower rate of annoying, unsolicited messages on IM is something to love.
5. Yahoo! IMVironments
According to Yahoo!, "An IMVironment is a themed environment that accompanies your instant messages. It can be used to convey a feeling or emotion; play interactive games; or share exclusive photos, music, and other forms of media." If you'd like to see what these IMVironments look like, check out these sites:
* http://in.docs.yahoo.com/messenger/imv/index.html
* http://messenger.yahoo.com/messenger/imv/index.html
For starters, you can see that this tool could be an excellent way for a special library to create an IM "identity" that is simultaneously cool and fun while sustaining a quality image for the library service. With this you can create a simple virtual reference and library chat environment.
6. Office hours
One of the possibilities that worries folks about IM is that they might need to be interacting with users 24/7. This is not the case. It is your choice when you choose to have IM on. While some of us are uncomfortable leaving a ringing phone unanswered, one of the skills with IM is choosing when and how you want to use it. You could choose to maintain IM "library hours" for helping clients, say, between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m., typical work hours. My children's teachers "appear" online often to help their classes. From his university, one former student still trades messages with a favorite high school teacher. You can set your IM presence to be online, out to lunch, offline, on the phone, away, busy, be right back, etc. You can even make yourself "appear" offline if you like.
7. Device-independent
IM works on most any device. It is pretty device agnostic when it comes to being used on telephones, PDAs, PCs, laptops, tablets, etc. It is pretty open to being useful with the devices as they develop and get market penetration. Since digital phones, Palm PCs, and PDAs outsell laptop and desktop PCs, the preferred personal communications device of the future is becoming evident.
8. Social networks and trusted circles
Our instant messenger buddies lists are the next-generation way to build trusted circles of colleagues and friends. People can ask to be on your list and you have to "permission" them in. You don't need to communicate with a buddy if you don't want to. You can choose not to add them to your list. If someone becomes annoying they can be easily blocked. Your buddies list is an excellent example of a trusted network. In this case you can have actual real-time conversations and share files easily--a far cry from sending electronic letters to each other or to electronic discussion lists.
9. Future integration
Some IM clients are beginning to offer services in which they connect to virtual classroom and conferencing facilities such as Webex. Some offer support for co-browsing and escorted searching through virtual reference applications, and others offer access to links, PDFs, and other documents for collaborative work. Each of these features is aimed at supporting the education and business enterprise markets that will be part of the working world our learners will encounter.
10. It's global and not space-dependent
Need to have a short conversation with a colleague across the world? IM is a great tool for this. You can arrange to meet at a specific time (maybe even ironically using e-mail) or you can just wait until you see they're online and send them a message. It's simple. Save loads of long-distance charges. And you can do this at any time of the day without incurring additional phone call costs on your home line.
11. Learn a new dialect
