Thing 7. Web 2.0 communication Tools

E-mail, of course, is major...is there anyone who doesn't know how to use it or what e-mail can do nowadays? In our libraries we use it as the major means to communicate with all staff at once, or from individual staff members to other staff members...Our library, more interestingly, has been greatly expanding its usage of e-mail to communicate directly with library customers on a scale that involves almost every aspect of customer contact...We use it in notifying users of upcoming library events or that titles of a user's favorite author has just been published. We also use e-mail to notify our customers that their hold requests are ready for pick up, or to let people know of titles overdue...and yes, reference questions asked by our users to our librarians is a growing part too, particularly when you can include attachments and web links to increase the amount of expert information going back to the public from the web.

What's new to me is this greater usage of web conferencing...I agree with the link that took me to the podcast on OPALs by Tom Peters that spoke of how this is still not as accepted by the general public as other social networking methods...he said there is the image of it being expensive and highly technical, more for big corporations than for the public library...but if you see what is out there by example, on the Web Junction site, I can see in the near future that this might be the next big wave for groups or even individuals to communicate with each other...using this software as a meeting ground where everyone can participate, and images or PowerPoint or video can be shown to all logged-in in real time, and most importantly, where people can respond back and contribute themselves to the presentation...this sounds incredible as a web-based method to form, someday, a virtual type library information gathering center among people from all over the world, exchanging ideas and information, with librarians supplying a lot of the expertise---but only I think, if down the road, there is little cost to users, and unfortunately, here Web Junction is a little mysterious as to what any public financed web conference software might cost? I can see, though, someday, libraries providing this software on their web sites to facilitate these public gatherings for the general library user.