I'm torn about the idea of chat reference at MCPL. The idea seems nice, but I'm not sure about the amount of interest from our patron base. I had the fortunate experience of assessing a chat reference interview for my S501: Reference class this semester. I was expecting a horrible experience, but in the end I had a great and informative interview. It was a chance to see chat reference done right. So my perception has been influenced by past experience. Overall though, I don't know that MCPL needs it. At the college level it works well enough, at least in my case, but it doesn't seem as necessary for us. That being said, I wouldn't mind participating in a study where we put a meebo messenger in the PAC and see where that takes us. Internal use of IM would be great for quick communications, but I don't think it would be beneficial at the reference desk because it is distracting.
Twitter... I don't know about twitter. I used it... it is okay. The real problem I have with it is how trivial it is. I've seen some application of twitter in libraries and it wasn't that useful. The best way I could see using it would be to post events that were happening in the library. The question is would it be a library twitter, or department, or individual. I'm not sold, yet.\
Not getting overwhelmed with Web 2.0. I like it, it is fun for me because I don't usually take part in these things on my own. It is nice to have something to force me to participate in the 2.0 web.
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I was recently clicking through the IU Libraries website, and was surprised to see that they're using Meebo for chat reference now. Who'd a-thunk' it?
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