Thing 5 - I Finally did it!

Well, I finally got around to IMing Susan. (Thanks Susan!)
For some reason I had troubles when using my account that I use for my blog, I went back in and created a gmail account and it worked lickety split. Who knows, but if this was the only Thing that gave me troubles, then yippeee!

I think the advantage of IM vs. email would be the quick responses. You know the person is available, you can ask the information you need and complete your business. I suppose an example would be someone with a reference question. If they emailed you a question like: I need facts about the history of Kearney. You would have to email back: What specific information would you like to know? population? when it became a town? etc. etc. This could end up being a long series of emails and a lot of waiting for each person to respond. With the IM, you could talk back and forth and have the needed answers right away.

IM could be fun chatting with friends, seeing what their plans are for the weekend, chatting when they are on vacation (they could fill you in on what they have done). I can really see a great use for this if you have friends/family in the military. It may be a simple way to communicate to one another any time of day.

At the library I think it would be useful in Reference situations, programming questions, book inquiries and more. The hardest part would be initially getting the information that the service is available out to the public.