Instant communication

I have tried Instant messaging in Gmail & yahoo. It was fun, but it's hard for people to be online at the same time. Also as I invited people from two different accounts (both Gmail and Yahoo) we kept missing each other, so when I was logged into the Gmail account they were responding to my yahoo invite and vice versa.

I have also tried Skype, using video chat and also via typing. I was impressed. I planned to make a PC to PC call to the US, but as Superchicken77 commented there were costs for that which I will need to investigate first.

I believe instant messaging would be very good for library communication with patrons as it feels more friendly and you can get a quicker response as opposed to emailing. They can also save money which would otherwise have been used for making a phone call and while the patron is waiting for an answer they can easily go to do something else.

I think that Skype would also be very useful for conferences, training and meeting with others from different locations at the same time etc.