Chat–it’s very neat, although I had a hard time keeping up, especially when there was more than one person in the chatroom. Obviously, one would need to have a great deal of familiarity with using a keyboard in order not to feel completely behind in the conversation. I am a pretty fast typist, but I met two other students in the chatroom and had all I could do to keep up with the conversation. It was VERY nice chatting with someone from class one-on-one (or two, as the case may be). It was interesting trying to maintain two conversations, although I felt bad if, in the course of responding to one person’s question, I appeared to give a nonsense answer to another question that popped in in the meantime. I’d like to find out what kind of cognitive development areas are enabled by the juggling of several conversations at once. It must be good practice for something that we can use. I’d like to see one of those brain scan images of someone who is chatting with multiple partners and see what areas of the brain light up.
Back to the first part of the assignment: I used the link to libraries that use IM and tried to IM two libraries in Massachusetts, the Metrowest Regional Library System and the Springfield College librarian. I contacted the librarian at Metrowest on Monday, and finally got a call today, Friday. (I haven’t heard back yet from the librarian at Springfield College) She was concerned that I sent the offline message a couple of weeks ago, but I assured her it was just this week. We arranged to chat and I signed back on to her Meebo. I’m not sure what kept interrupting her, but I know i kept getting interrupted by kids wanting to register for summer reading. After arranging to chat, I think we were able to just get a few sentences off to each other and I was in the process of asking her about how she uses the chat when she left, never to return. I’m not sure if she had to leave or this was a glitch in the system. She wanted to know how I found her chat and I told her about Rebecca’s link. She asked me to pass it on to her, which I did, but I’m not sure if she ever got it–while I was typing and pasting, she went offline. She was able to tell me that she doesn’t use the chat for reference, but more for keeping in touch (with staff or patrons I’m not sure because that’s when we lost contact the first time.)
I put a Meebo box on my Blog, but didn’t know how to activate it so that the message read that I was online. I clicked on everything that seemed likely with no luck. I’ll have to go to the website and take a tutorial or something, I guess.
