Thing 7: Text, text, text

I started working on Thing 7 in late June, about the time I started teaching the class that meant I didn't do any of the 23 Things for the next month and a half. (It was a 2-credit course on research skills, and it's going really well.)

At least I read the long article about e-mail—the readings for this Thing were particularly lengthy, perhaps because the things themselves (e-mail, texting, and webinars) are so lightweight? Methinks the medium doth protest too much—as I was preparing a lecture on the history of the Internet. So I worked in some facts from the reading, such as the date the first e-mail in the world was sent (1971), that I hoped made this extremely dry topic a little less dry.

Speaking of dry, here are the questions that the 23 Things people think I should be blogging on for this Thing:

• Describe how your library uses email. Has it improved productivity?
• Share your thoughts on online reference using some of the other Web 2.0 communication tools.
• Are you an active user of text messaging, IM, or other communication tools?
• Which OPAL or MINITEX Web conference (Webinar) did you attend? How was it? What do you think of this communication tool?

Whew! And, mind you, I'd like to get a little Twitter in for extra credit (even though I already use Meebo on the job, another extra-credit item). So I'd better do all this in future blog posts, rather than clutter up this one. Later!