I'm Not Here I'm There -- Using a Local Instant Messaging Service in Your Library

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I'm Not HereI'm There: Using a Local Instant Messenger Server in your Library John Fink Digital Technologies Development Librarian McMaster University http://twitter.com/adr http://claimid.com/adr [email_address]

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An apology...

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Who am I?

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Who are you?

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Why did Ido this?

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A brief primeron our blended service.

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I went tolibrary school to do reference.

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Then suddenly, Ididn't have reference anymore

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So I could...

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...hang around thereference desk stalking people

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...hide in themachine room, coming out occasionally to get coffee

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...despair of everdealing with the public again.

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Because if we'retaken out of the public sphere, and especially out of reference, we will atrophy . We don't know what patrons are looking for, and we may not be up on the search methods, databases, etc that they're using.

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When I wason the desk 10-20 hours a week, I felt energized.

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But it's notjust me... Any library – any organization – will have problems with communication commensurate with its size.

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Email, telephones, newsletters,forums – these are all ok, but nothing really replaces walking by someone's office and going ”Hey, look at this neat thing, you got five minutes?”

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This is madeway worse if you have multiple branches.

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In other words...

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...we need synchronous as well as asynchronous communications methods.

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When I wasa young sysadmin, I felt that – maybe even more than http – email was the one service that had to be up.

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Now I thinkthat about IM services.

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Tackling a socialproblem with a technical solution.

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But back toreference Libraries are changing blah blah blah

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...blah blah blah...

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...dedicated reference servicesby librarians will, by all measure, get less prevalent instead of more prevalent.

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...I'm a librarian,and I think this mostly sucks.

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But why didn'twe... ...go with telephone referrals?

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...or set officehours?

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...or a hostedIM solution (libraryh3lp, etc)

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...or a ”consumergrade” IM solution (gtalk, AIM, etc.)

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DO NOT WANT

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NOOOOO

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Now that we'vegot those two out of the way...

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...using standard IMis not ideal because

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...we want tofoster a sense of community

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...we want tomake it easy enough for all staff to take part

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...we want anin-house solution, for security and convenience.

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...we've heard horrorstories about libraryh3lp.

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Also... We needsome things that standard IM doesn't do...

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...or at leastdoesn't do easily .

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...like have allusers join a single group

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...so they cansee and be seen by everybody else

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...and maybe moreimportantly

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… so theycan all talk together.

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Any solution had to be...

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...standards compliant.

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...usable with crossplatform clients.

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...open source.

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...simple to implement.

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...simple to use.

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...local.

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Openfire

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Why Openfire? Java!

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... Java?

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XMPP/Jabber so...

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...works with Pidgin/Adium/<insertmultiprotocol client here>

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...can run oncommodity hardware.

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..no seriously Java!

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But also! Openfirecan have everyone added to a buddy group automatically...

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And hey presto!

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When I saycommodity hardware, I mean it.

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...original box afive year old Dell

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...one gb ofRAM

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...teeny tiny harddrive.

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…on its lastlegs.

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A plea forthe cloud...

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So how dowe use this? ...well, originally, we did it so paraprofessionals at desk could, if they got an unanswerable question, send it around to people

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...but we've usedit for

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...quick polling

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...general ”socializing”

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...system outages

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...probably lots ofother stuff I don't see. And that's fine!

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Some problems... Addingaccounts is annoying due to no centralized identity service (e.g. LDAP)

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XMPP is astandard, but not everyone implements it well (problems exist in Adium that don't in Pidgin, even though both are libpurple based)

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For it to really work well, you need outside net access.

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This is notalways trivial.

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And ideally...We'd like buy in at all levels.

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Right now, dueto our (now departed) access services head we've got most blended services paraprofessionals but...

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...usage is notcompulsory.

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...so we usually see the same 10-15 users.

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...and librarian involvementis not exactly where I'd like it.

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Got time fora demo?

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Any questions?

I'm Not Here I'm There -- Using a Local Instant Messaging Service in Your Library

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