Invisible Ink

I had an IM where the student couldn't see my responses. I could see his and he said he could see the notice that I was typing but did not see my text. He tried from two different Yahoo IM accounts. Eventually he just said he thought he had solved the problem (who know what he was referring to?) and exited. He said he was using a Mac. Hopefully a one-off event.

IM in the library (no, really, IN the library!)

Angelica had an interesting experience this morning. While handling an IM question at the reference desk at EVC, she realized the student was IMing from the Riverside library. Once I saw someone do this with chat, and I know from IP addresses showing in LivePerson that people from outside the library, but on campus.

Has anyone else had this experience with IM yet? My gut reaction would be to tell them to ask for help locally -- it would be faster -- but I don't want to put people off who, for whatever reason, don't want to talk to a live human being. I know I'VE been there!

Any thoughts or ideas about this phenomenon?