I just had my first IM reference question!!!! Yay!!!!! I told you I was optimistic.
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Month: October 2006
I don’t know if it’s something I ate or what, but I’ve had the craziest dream. My Immersion 06 classmates and I were competing to create gourmet drinks (mine had something to do with cola and canned fruit with ice… but it was so much more complicated than that, and probably just as revolting as that sounds), and Tim Gunn from Project Runway was judging us.
I’d just been told to “make it work,” when I discovered I had to blow my nose, so I used a tissue from a pile I found in one corner of the table. I had no idea that this was the center piece of a creation by Jason, and apparently he thought I’d deliberately sabotaged his project. He was so mad that he ground up a glass ball (like the ones you hang on Christmas trees) into my drink!
All I can say is that I would never knowingly sabotage your tissue-esque greatness, Jason. Please don’t try to kill me with tiny shards of glass.
I think I’ll try to get more sleep in the next few days, and maybe drink soothing tea before bed. Though there’s no break in my schedule for a bit yet. Hmmmm…. Maybe I’ll just have to put up with wacky dreams for a bit.
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Last year, sitting at our Research/IT desk, we started noticing that the SCIC workers sitting next to us were often engaged in lively conversation via IM. At about the same time, a few of us got started on Google Talk and it quickly spread through the rest of us as a way to ask quick questions of each other throughout the day without actually interrupting each other as completely as we had been by popping into each others’ offices. (Personally, I think this was mostly a strategy to keep me in my office because I was new and doing a lot of popping in to ask questions… but nobody’s admitting to that ulterior motive.)
We really took to this as a method of communication. We still do a lot of popping in, but now we have communication choices. Not only that, but every once in a while we’ll be fielding a tough question during the night or weekend desk shift and end up IMing a co-worker for help. This isn’t frequent, but I’ve benefited once and I’ve helped out once, and both times there’s no way the reference interaction could have been successful otherwise. We’re also keeping in social contact after work, which I really enjoy.
So after we’d played with this for one school year, we decided we wouldn’t mind creating AIM accounts to give out to students. We each have our own account, and we can each be online when we’re able to answer questions and offline or “Away” when we’d rather not answer questions, so we completely sidestepped all of the staffing and coverage issues that comes with “real” IM reference. On the other hand, this relies heavily on our liaison model, with students encouraged to meet with the librarian for their classes and major for anything more than general reference help. So in this sense, it’s more an extension of our individual consultation service than of our reference service. But it provided a no-risk method of trying a new service this term, so we decided to go this route.
So far, the response has been mixed. One of my co-workers has answered a couple of IM questions (and we all rejoiced), but the rest of us haven’t yet. [Update: It appears I’m wrong. One more of my co-workers has answered a couple of questions, and she is even one student’s very first IM buddy!} We’re also running up against a strong culture of face-to-face interaction here at Carleton, and some students have voiced the opinion that it’s “sad” when people can’t stand up, walk over, and ask us questions.
So I wouldn’t call our experience a rousing success if you look at it as a stand-alone service. And yet, there are three reasons that I’m glad we’re doing it and that we don’t have any plans to discontinue it.
First, it gives us a chance to experiment with a new “toy.” This is always valuable, especially when there’s no cost associated with that experimentation.
Second, it contributes to our efforts to not only BE approachable and accessible to students, but also to APPEAR to be approachable and accessible. I’ve been thinking a lot lately (as I experiment with Ask.com vs. Google or worry that my laptop is dying and notice how that changes what I think about putting into it) about the appearance vs. the reality of usefulness and trustworthiness. And basically I’ve come to the conclusion that the appearance of trustworthiness is more important than the actuality. If I trust something, it takes a lot to get me to go back on that trust, and the converse is also true. In the same way, I think building the appearance of accessibility, expertise, and usefulness to our students is at least as important as actually providing accessible, expert, and useful assistance. And our new AIM handles are helping with this… I think.
Third, I don’t care if I only receive one IM question. That’s one question that may not have come to the desk. And it’s not costing me anything in time or money to have AIM running in the background on my desktop. Even with a culture of face-to-face interaction on campus, there will always be someone who is shy about approaching the desk, or simply communicates better through the written word than the spoken word. There are lots of students that I only hear from via email, and I can foresee a time when these students will make me a buddy rather than putting me into their email address book.
Of course, I’m still waiting for that first IM question… but it’ll come. I’m nothing if not optimistic.
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tags: I have so much to do… but I’m not doing any of it well. My house is too empty. My cat isn’t in a mood to warm my lap. And work reading is a far cry from the “good book” that should be going with my cup of tea. If I lived in a city I might go to a coffee shop or something, but I don’t. And besides, it’s cold outside. And dark.
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