Thing 12: Collaborative Tools

Ah, group projects. When I was a library school student, our professors told us “Get used to this. You're going to be working in groups for the rest of your career.” (And when group projects weren't going well...we heard the same advice.)

I have experience with multiple collaborative approaches. When serving as an SLA Division committee member, I find that many teams tend to use older technologies. One of the committees I'm on right now relies extensively on email, leading to the dreaded long, confusing chains Slack could eliminate. Within my medium sized library, however, most group work involves face-to-face meetings (and face-to-face informal discussion between meetings).

For all these groups, however, Google Drive has certainly facilitated both creating items and maintaining files for later reference by all group members. (I am old enough to remember working with people whose email systems did not permit attachments. We would need to incorporate plain text into the body of an email. Replies would be even lengthier emails, as correspondents would need to specify the paragraph, line number, and the wording of a specific phrase--in both its “before” and “after” versions. The alternatives were faxing--with charges for long distance calls--or even using the postal service.)

As for the other tools mentioned, I’ve used Doodle both as a meeting organizer and as an attendee. My experience with voice-only meetings (via Adobe Connect, WebEx, and Google Hangouts) is that it’s never clear when somebody finishes speaking. It can be awkward or even difficult to add to a discussion without interrupting another participant. Sometimes I wonder, “Was that odd noise a stifled sneeze or a brief verbal objection?” Visual cues available during video calls with a group reduce those problems. It’s definitely less of a hassle to use Skype than to set up room reservations to video conference via Polycom.

I’ve used a couple of additional collaborative tools. A shared spreadsheet works well for scheduling meetings--as long as everybody agrees on the meaning of a “filled” cell (free or busy) and knows how to add fills to cells. My supervisor schedules internal meetings by viewing all of her subordinates’ shared Google calendars to find open times.

The ideal collaborative tool requires a minimal learning curve and operates across multiple platforms and/or modes. Considering the options for this Thing, Doodle and Skype best meet those criteria.