Chat; or communication without grammar

The article about the controversy over providing chat reference was very interesting. To chat or not to chat. That was the question. Not so much anymore but I do see consequences of chatting. A question with horrible grammar, spelling, etc just gets right under my skin. As does the all-caps chatters. I perceive that they are yelling at me. Awful! Chatting is also missing the non verbal clues that you get by doing a in-person or verbal conversation. The "instant answer" expectation is another problem. I have scripts asking patrons to "hang on, this may take time". My skin will get thicker to all the errors, I'm sure.

Wikis, wikis, wikis

Now this is technology that I like! To me, wikis mimic the most common way people like to get their information. They ask someone: a cubemate, a friend, teacher, librarian, etc. What could be more natural than to take that concept and formalize in a format that is becoming jsut as natural as speaking. Wikipedia is a favorite resource of mine. Library Success is something I've not seen before, but I'm already enamored. What a great resource! I will spend quite a bit of time looking this site over this summer.