Thing Seven

E-mail
I appreciate Microsoft Outlook's tools, especially the ability I have organize read messages in folders, flag messages for response, and direct e-mail messages from a particular sender into pre-specified folders. My personal account allows these same functions and I use them there, as well.

But, as the author of Five fast email productivity tips points out no matter how many wonderful tools are available to increase productivity e-mail can also be a HUGE distraction. I've found that checking my messages twice a day is quite sufficient and helps me remain more fully focused on the important tasks at hand. As important as I may believe librarianship is, there is very little of urgent importance in my world. Less checking is, perhaps, the best advice for productivity!

More on Instant Messaging
Although I have already experimented with Google Talk I had yet to watch the University of Buffalo YouTube. My multi-tasking trepidation is now coupled with an anxiety of having to learn a new language. In all seriousness, while I think IM is a great tool and I am very interested in how it might help us be where our students need us I would have to spend time "practicing" my IM skills with co-workers and/or friends before I felt comfortable and confident that I was offering good service. And it appears I am not the only one with this fear: "'Some librarians are afraid of being overwhelmed with questions, are not comfortable handling multitasking…don't type very fast, or just prefer face-to-face interaction,' states Chris Desai, who manages the IM initiative at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale." In the same way that a face to face interview is different from phone reference I believe there are IM skills that I would need to hone and types of phrases I would need to learn to more effectively communicate via IM.

Text Messaging
This would be great for the simple questions we run into everyday: what database should I use? how late are you open? do you have...? I can even imagine students sitting upstairs studying using the function if they are having trouble finding an article in full-text but don't want to bother with running down and finding a librarian. And besides all of that I would be very excited if a user could text message call numbers from the catalog so that they can locate books.