The UW Law Library has recently upgraded our IM/chat reference service with a new tool called Plugoo. We’ve added a text chat box to our home page inviting our students, faculty, and staff to contact us with reference questions. And it was free and easy.
Interested in developing a chat service for your organization? Just get yourself an instant messaging account, register with Plugoo, copy some code into your web page and you’ve got your own chat service.
This is an awesome tool for libraries. Patrons can contact you in real time right from their computer. They don’t need to have an IM account to use it – just type their question into the box. And if you’re not logged into your IM account, patrons can email their questions instead.
Anyone else using Plugoo? If so, please share your comments.