November 04, 2007 By Mary Paige

Web 2.0 Award Winner Conduit

I looked at quite a few of the Web2.0 Award nominees located on the SEOmoz website. (An aside: Why doesn't SEOmoz have an FAQ page explaining what SEOmoz means? I had to search their site to find out!) I looked most of the categories, since I though almost all of them might offer libraries some new tools. The one that I decided to explore more thoroughly was Conduit, 2nd place winner in the Marketing category. It's free (unlike the winner in that category, iContact), and seemed simple yet powerful. It allows you to put parts of your website in a toolbar that users can put on their browsers. The toolbar has live chat and real-time messaging capabilities, too.

I can see this application being used by libraries. There could be a search tool for the online catalog and other resources, and librarians could provide assistance via the live chat and/or real-time messaging functions. Once the user downloads the toolbar, it appears on the user's Internet browser at all times, reminding him/her that library services are always close at hand. The toolbar eliminates the need to go to a separate web address, or to dial a phone number, in order to initiate an inquiry. Save the time of the user, as Ranganathan said!

Read the full posting here.