Thing 20 - Instant Messaging

It is nice to see how librarians are providing live reference service via IM nowadays. Sites like Chat with a Massachusetts Law Librarian are a way to go! I tried asking a question today, but it was too long of a wait to connect live and I ended up emailing them. Still, nice idea. And I did successfully chat with our course teacher, which was more on topic anyway... I really liked the idea of scheduled group chats at another online XML course I took a few years ago - they made the virtual course feel more real once and for all turning me into a pro-online education champion. The review and comparison of 20 IM services is of a great help: I've never heard of Snimmer and eBuddy before, and many others that combine the most popular instant messengers into one. I am often using Yahoo Messenger with my friends and have come to appreciate Skype with its audio/video features, free international calls, games, and file tranfer systems. Using this in workplace, especially for library and archival services, makes perfect sense: our email tranfers have size limitations, whereas requests for digital files have grown over the last years. And wouldn't it be nice to see your distant patrons once in a while putting faces to names? All of this makes me wonder: do any librarians find chats distracting? I could see how they could be, when you announce to the world to be "online" and become inevitably "available", no matter how busy your day is...