Why not Meebo?

 

I have considered the virtues of virtual reference before while using services like AskAway through UWM (my graduate institution) and AskColorado Web (formerly the cleverly named “Smarty Pants”). These systems use cumbersome (read: Java) based systems that push web pages out to users, log and email chats, manage multiple librarians in a que sort of structure (much like a technical support line) and generally make for a “unified” experience.
What gets me, however, is that almost all of these abilities, and more, are available in modern chat applications, without the financial, technical or computing overhead. Though libraries (at least public ones) do not have much of a need to invest in Skype, because they all have old fashioned phones, a simple MSN, AOL or Yahoo! account would overcome many of the barriers libraries have to adopting virtual reference. 

What drives this post, however, is the new MeeboMe service, which is a simple applet you can insert into any web page so people can chat directly with the owner of a website. I’ve seen this type of technology before (once, while surfing an ecommerce site someone popped up and asked if they could help me), but this is lowering the bar to the “plug and play” level, just as instant messengers did for chat. A library could insert this on their home page or their [sucky] OPAC, any problem spot, or any spot that makes it easy to find, and bam, instant hookup to the library. Can’t figure out how to renew your books? We’ll walk you through it. Need something that we don’t have? Done. Want to know what the library hours are? Easy answer. And there’s no excuse not to do it because the overhead is virtually non existent.

Special props to Postmodern Sass for the song lyric post title.

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Published:
08.23.06 / 3am
Category:
Library, Reference, Technology