IM and you

I have been using IM for many years now. Though to be honest most this has been for fun. It seems only recently that people have been seeing IMing as a way to communicate for business needs. In fact my old workplace did not even allow IM clients on its machines until about two years ago. Overnight it went from never - ever use this at work to being expected to utilize it as a why to communicate with geographically dispersed coworkers without tearing them away from what they were doing.

The nice thing about IM is that it is a little more immediate than email. But not as intrusive as a phone call. The recipient can choose whether to acknowledge the message or not - and do so at there own pace.

In the library it is nice because you can answer questions semi-asynchronously. In addition you can send links and even files back through the IM client.