But how can a solo librarian telecommute, you ask? Well, I may not get much cataloging or shelving done on the one day a week that I’m home, but I am able to do just about everything else. Still, in order to be successful, I needed a few weapons in my arsenal of home-based technology, which I’ll gladly share with you:
- Computer
- Internet Access
- Document editing software (remember Google docs, or one of the many shareware options available if you don’t have Office or Works at home)
- Friendly web-based e-mail client (no, really.)
- Telephone (really? why would I need one of those?)
Let me explain further on those last two.
The first thing I noticed about my workflow, was that it really suffered when I was trying to sort or search through our web-based e-mail client (Outlook). Basically, these functions on the web-based version are null and void. For now, I have been creating special top-level folders for e-mails that I need to refer to in the near future. I have also been more diligent about adding people to my address book, rather than relying on sorting and finding the last e-mail I received from them (come on… you know you do that too.) I am now investigating a POP option to forward all of my e-mails to a free web-based account, such as Gmail.
Now, the phone. Yes, people still need to be able to reach me via phone. Although I do a lot of internet based reference, on occasion, people like to be able to call me. Go figure. I am lucky enough to have a home phone in place, an office who’s telecom system can transfer to outside phone numbers, and caller ID that even tells me that I’m receiving a call from work. (It’s weird to be answering the phone at home saying, “This is Molly, how can I help you?” So far, I haven’t greeted a telemarketer that way, but I’m sure my time is coming.)
But what if you don’t have a home line? So many of us don’t anymore… and perhaps like me, you don’t want to use your cell phone minutes. Or maybe you are like my co-worker who literally lives in the woods and gets no cell phone reception and so she relies on an old-fashioned phone line. But she also can’t access her wireless connection in her house, (because the trees are too full in the summer, of course) so she has made an office for herself in another nearby building. This means that somethin’s gotta give- in one spot, she doesn’t have a phone, and in the other she doesn’t have internet. Her solution? Skype. The internet-based phone/video system. (I KNOW you've heard of it.) Now she has a phone wherever she has internet. I think she pays a small fee to be able to call non-Skype phone numbers, but it’s worth it to her, and we have a local phone number that we can reach her on too.
So there you have it. I was going to add "printer" to the list, but honestly, I haven't used mine yet. I generally e-mail myself a copy of whatever I've been working on at the end of the day.
