Record Breaking IMs in July!
Well, record breaking for us.
Teen and Adult both saw increases in IM in July.
For those of you interested in how it's going:
Teen=11 Adult=4 Youth=0
The best IM was from a "kid in Wheeling" who is moving to Lansing and wanted to know more about the services the library offers and what the schools are like. I hope his chat with AskLPLteen made the idea of moving to a whole new town less stressful.
I'm impressed he was checking us out in advance!
We've had some staff changes in youth since starting IM ref, so this month I'm planning a Trillian boot camp for the staff.
I think the above anecdote will be a plus to the presentation.
I'm soliciting comments & opinions on ... should staff who share a "departmental" IM screen name identify themselves when responding to an IM? (Our phone policy is to identify ourselves, should this carry over to IM?) Thoughts, pros, cons... comment here or email me!
Teen and Adult both saw increases in IM in July.
For those of you interested in how it's going:
Teen=11 Adult=4 Youth=0
The best IM was from a "kid in Wheeling" who is moving to Lansing and wanted to know more about the services the library offers and what the schools are like. I hope his chat with AskLPLteen made the idea of moving to a whole new town less stressful.
I'm impressed he was checking us out in advance!
We've had some staff changes in youth since starting IM ref, so this month I'm planning a Trillian boot camp for the staff.
I think the above anecdote will be a plus to the presentation.
I'm soliciting comments & opinions on ... should staff who share a "departmental" IM screen name identify themselves when responding to an IM? (Our phone policy is to identify ourselves, should this carry over to IM?) Thoughts, pros, cons... comment here or email me!
posted by digital.brarian at
10:16 PM
2 Comments:
Sarah Houghton here from Librarian in Black and the Marin County Free Library. We have one general sign-in for IM & e-mail reference. Our in-house policy is that staff must wear staff-badges, but can omit their names and simply have "Staff" as their name. I think there are concerns about privacy that drive these desires to be anonymous, but it does depersonalize the service a bit. At the same time, as someone who has been stalked by a library patron (got first name off of badge, full name from city employment records, and address from who knows where), I can understand the desire to be anonymous.
By
Library Staff, At
2:32 PM
I'm from Singapore, and our public librarians wear their real names on nametags. So I would think the same would apply to IM. Locally, all large service organisations (libraries included) would have their service staff say their names when first answering the phone. I've also found that over IM, it helps to show a face (or at least an icon) and a first name.
Using a real name does carry a risk of being stalked, but there's an unwritten understanding among my colleagues that it comes with the job. Maybe it's also because Singapore is quite small and generally such perps are quickly dealt with by our very efficient police.
By
Ivan Chew, At
11:34 AM
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