Practical Side of IM Reference

Michael Stephens has a long post about the practical aspects of instant messaging reference, including some statistics and discussion of IM's added value to the community.  Just to show that Michael's library isn't the only one experiencing IM success, here's a graph of IM reference questions answered between January '05 and February '06 at the Marin County Free Library (my until-recently employer).  The IM Reference project was my baby there.

Michael reported that IM Reference accounted for about 1-2% of all reference questions, which is about what we found too.  And I echo his sentiment that the ROI on IM Reference is extremely high, especially if you have staff monitoring your "IM desk" from the regular reference desk.

There is so much information out there about IM Reference, and any time anyone asks me where to start if they're interested in starting up a service at their library I point them to the Library Success Wiki page about IM Reference.  So many good resources there.