Category Archives: web-based chat

QuestionPoint widget review, or, sweeping vendor dirt

Caleb Tucker-Raymond provides a review of the new widgets available with OCLC’s virtual reference software QuestionPoint at his L-net blog. Titled “QuestionPoint widgets and what to do about them”, his review is entirely fair and instead of simply pointing out the faults of the QP widgets he offers a workaround.
Read his post, [...]

meebo love

Jessamyn and I got mentioned on the meebo blog today:
Turns out that locked-down computers, reference librarians who always want to be in touch with their patrons, and the desire to make libraries fun and friendly have given meebo and meebo me the perfect opportunity to shine.
Just recently, we smiled when reading Jessamyn’s blog where she [...]

security issues in virtual reference systems, ageism

Please don’t mistake this post a bit of schadenfreude, but I was very interested to read an article titled “a spam filter for questionpoint” the other day. In it, Caleb Tucker-Raymond, the Statewide Digital Reference Coordinator for the L-net project, describes the issue of spam coming through QuestionPoint. He also does a great [...]

“Combining IM and Vendor-based Chat: A Report from the Frontlines of an Integrated Service.”

Kathleen from University of Illinois at Urbana-Chamapaign left a comment about a paper she recently published. I like the UIUC doesn’t see IM and web-based chat as an either/or proposition and look forward to reading the paper.

The UIUC (Univ. Illinois @ Urbana-Chamapaign) Library has been operating IM reference alongside its chat service since Feb [...]

IM talking points

No matter how much I seem to flap my gums about instant messaging, I still find some people are interested. As I mentioned in the previous post, the conversation has shifted from getting the occasional “Meh” or “Nope, no way” to “Yes! I know I need to do this, but no one else [...]