Instant Messaging and "Ask a Librarian" exercises

I have a Meebo account and have participated in some of the group chat rooms there. I do not have any contacts in Meebo, though, so I have not used it for chatting with friends. I have used IM within the "Second Life" virtual world to contact friends. I have also used the IM feature of Skype (the free voice over the internet program). Since I did my degree online, I have a lot of experience using the chat rooms from the "Blackboard" online course software.

For the exercise this week, I used my Gmail account which has a chat ability. I chatted with John R. and it worked well. If I was at home, I could have used the Google Talk program and had it on in the background, so I would not have to keep the Gmail program open. It was fun to chat, but I still prefer phone and email for most tasks. I think that this may be because I do not know many people who use IM a lot.

I tried the "Ask a Librarian" chat. The preliminary screen asks for your email address. This is not a required field, but it takes a moment to figure that out. I am afraid that this may turn off some of the patrons who are using this service - since they may not want to give their email because of privacy issues. I first chatted with a public librarian in Jacksonville. He had some technical difficulties and transferred me to another librarian. The second librarian was from the Florida Gulf Coast University and she answered my question. I did not ask a question that required cobrowsing, so I am not sure if I had set my software up properly for that (for example, pop-ups must be enabled). Except for the technical problems, the question was answered quickly. It was pleasant chatting with the librarians.