Saturday, October 18, 2008

38 per cent?

This post is being composed at the front desk, in between checkouts (6 items out & an address check), phone calls (there's one now), assisting users with public access computers, (just did that) etc. on the 6th day of my 7-day work week.

In the Nebraska Learns 2.05th Thing, the writer decries that only 38% of Library Directors use I.M.

Where, I wonder, do those 38% find the time?

My typical work day finds me flitting from task to task like a demented bumblebee. The only time I'm at one spot for any length of time is when I'm working the front desk (gotta help a group with the meeting room), or doing something labor intensive & repetitive like cataloging, working on web pages (revised 3 pages between 8:00 a.m. & 10:00 before the library opened), etc. In those situations I do not need the (excuse me while I handle this reference question) distraction. With e-mail I can deal with things at my pace, edit text before sending, etc. (one last checkout) --
Elapsed time to compose this approx. 45 minutes so far.. (2 at-desk checkouts, 1 overdue charge collection, 1 phone renewal, 1 more assist user at public access computer) .. now one more quick read through & this should be ready to post.

2 comments:

Susan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Susan said...

In a situation like you describe, trying to be available to patrons via IM would certainly be problematic. In our situation here at NLC, where we always have someone sitting at the reference desk and they don't have the sort of demands on them that someone in a small public library has, it works great.

I think a lot of our reference chats originate off the State of Nebraska web pages which have a "Reference Desk" link on them. People having trouble finding state government information often click on this link, and when they see the Meebo chat widget they type in their question and get an immediate response.