Time

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Location

To be held at METRO. Directions

Agenda

1. Discuss results of the 47 votes received for this meeting's topic (see this screen shot of the voting results from SurveyMonkey.com)
2. Kate Lyons and Jose Diaz of Hostos Community College will make a brief presentation on the use of Meebo Me at the Hostos CC Library.
3. Sara Marcus will facilitate a discussion on the use of free IM and chat space tools for reference services.

Recommended Reading

Please take a look at the page in this wiki on IM Reference.

Notes from the Meeting

Attendees: 10

1. We reviewed the results of the vote for this meeting's topic to decide what the topic should be for the next meeting. It was agreed that the next meeting will cover the use of Facebook and MySpace for reference services. It was also agreed that the next meeting should be in late September. Stephen Francoeur agreed to work with Metro to find an available date.
2. Kate Lyons from Hostos Community College spoke about her library's pilot project using Meebo for an instant messaging reference service.
1. Launched as a pilot project during finals week. Lyons was amazed at how easy it was to set up the software, the accounts, and get a widget for the service put on the library web site. Meebo is a great tool for those whose libraries won't let them install software (such as IM clients) on their staff machines. Meebo is a web-based service; all you need to do is set up an account on Meebo, input your screen names and login info for your other IM accounts (AOL, MSN, Google, Yahoo!), and then you can monitor multiple IM accounts from the web-based Meebo site.
2. Lyons mentioned that MySpace has some sort of an IM system, but Meebo isn't able to connect to that service yet (as it can now with the IM systems from AOL, MSN, Google, and Yahoo!)
3. Users can add your library's screen name as a buddy so they can more easily contact you.
4. Few of the librarians at the meeting today actually use IM for their own communications. With the exception of the presenter, Kate Lyons, none of the attendees are at libraries where IM reference is a service. Attendees agreed that sometimes who you are and where you are determine whether you're likely to be using IM for personal communication; clearly, younger generations are heavier users of IM. But in some settings (such as certain corporations or industries), IM use is prevalent (although those IM networks may not use the commercial services like AOL IM but instead closed networks, also known as enterprise IM).
5. Privacy issues for IM reference need to be explored and disclosed to users. Attendees didn't know what Meebo's policies were with IM transcripts (who keeps them, how long are they kept, are there any circumstances in which an outside party might have access to IM transcripts).
6. Lyons noted that a IM reference statistics page on a library's staff wiki has been set up for librarians to keep track of reference sessions they have in IM. It was suggested that perhaps a Google spreadsheet might be an easier way for librarians to enter transaction data into a shared online space.

The meeting adjourned around 11:30 am.