Personally, I prefer to communicate face to face with patrons and co-workers. My second choice would be to have a telephone conversation. However, often this is not possible. ( I hate playing telephone-tag with voice-mail messages!) I've found that e-mail is a great way to communicate at work, especially if you want the same message to go to a number of people. My library has several groups set up, such as Circulation Staff, Reference Staff, etc. It is very useful for updating staff on new procedures, sharing information, asking and answering questions, etc. We use automatic e-mail to notify patrons about requests and overdue items, and recently added a new "reminder" feature that notifies them 3 days BEFORE their due date that they have items to return or renew. E-mail could also be used to answer patron's reference questions, etc. E-mail definitely increases productivity--I can't imagine what we would do without it! All in all, I think e-mail is the best web tool for communication in public libraries.
I really don't like instant messaging very much. When I am online, I am usually working on a project or doing research, and I need to concentrate. IM is the web equivalent of a constantly ringing telephone, interrupting me and demanding immediate attention. To use IM, both people need to be online at the same time. In my department (Circulation) staff are usually not working on internet computers, so IM would not be a good way for us to communicate with each other. There are possiblilites for using this in reference though, as shown in the video we watched. I found the comments about reference use of IM in No Lutefisk on a Stick's blog to be very interesting - his system used it for a while with mixed results.
Text messaging is something a lot of people use, especially students, so it may have a use in academic libraries. I find it to be very cumbersome. It is difficult to type a a message on the tiny keypad of a cell phone, and the myriad of abbreviations used in texting make the "conversation" awkward at best. Plus, it costs $ every time you send or receive a text message. I can see possibly using this as an option for notifying patrons that requests are ready to pick up. (PK RQ ACL NTN) ??
I attended the OPAL conference on "Podcasting" by Sam Chupp. I found it to be very interesting, as I previously knew very little about this. I was surprised at how easy it is for the average person to make their own podcast, using free software called "Audacity". He also gave some examples of how libraries can use podcasting.
