University of Waterloo's "Ask a Librarian" screenshot courtesy of Jenny Levine, the The Shifted Librarian, one of my favorite bloggers.

My notes:

1. The "IM a Librarian" information and widget, courtesy of Meebo's MeeboMe. No download required.

2. Skype not supported by Meebo (absent Skype offering a web service API for IM).

3. Office hours (four hours a weekday) published at point of contact. A static presence signal, but still useful.

4. No call center-style tools for supporting after-hours contact (IM bots to serve up FAQs and TRELLIS catalogue searches), scaling to multiple librarians when demand spikes, or augmenting live conversation with translation, white board, file transfer, video, etc.

5. IM and Skype were prioritized (higher on the page) than phone numbers or email.

Jenny observes the University of Calgary added MeeboMe widgets "everywhere - on search results, item records, and my favorite, the “no results found” page. That last one is particularly brilliant, as it provides a lifeline at the point of need at a dead end for patrons."