CPD23 Thing 4

How Do I Keep Up?

Keeping up to date and on top of things always seems so hard to do, particularly since the advent of the Internet, Google and instant knowledge. I have used Twitter for a while and partly use it as news source. I follow various Twitter accounts of things that interest me from professional to personal, although few of my friends or colleagues use Twitter. I follow some mainstream media, some Library news sources and some fun news sources. I have often found Twitter to be a good way to keep very current and check it once a day at work. I rarely check it at home.

RSS Feeds have been more problematic. I have learned about them a few years ago and have used RSS Feeds on and off. My problem is the having to check in part. I do like the Google Reader better than other I have used. One because it is not yet another username/password to forget; and two because it only keeps things as unread for a short while so when you do check in months later you are not overwhelmed by the quantity of what you haven't read.

I did set up a Pushnote account but have yet to see a lot of utility here. The main stumbling blocks seems to be that there aren't that many people using it. And you can only search for people by username or email address. I tried searching for CPD23 and got nothing. I'll experiment and try rating some sites and see how it goes but so far I am not seeing how useful it is.

A service I find useful for keeping up is Tabbloid which allows you to have a RSS Feeds in a PDF document deliver to email once a week. I have in that RSS Feed a bunch of library (okay, cataloging) related blogs. I can scan through them quickly, click on those that I want to read more about and I am done. I find this easier to do than remembering to check into Google Reader. You can even print out the PDF if you need to take it off line to read.

As I am US based I also find useful the email enewsletters from Library Journal and the Wednesday afternoon email from American Libraries Direct -- both are good ways to keep up on what is going in US libraries at least, and often offer a bit of humor. Which is always a good thing!

And I do still use Listserv -- AUTOCAT is very active and can be draining to use at times but also a good source of information (I do a digest so I get only one message a day and can scan through it and then delete or follow up as need be). A few others a a bit less active and easier to keep up with.

Lastly, conversing with others is always a good way to learn new things and has the added advantage of the personal touch.

Week 4, thing 9

While getting this thing ready for O! What a Geek I tried searching on the Topix, Syndic8 and Technorati (for the record, I dislike these "cute" names which are difficult to spell. I have enough problems spelling). I didn't much care for any of them.

Technorati was okay for locating some blogs. I tried searching on Melbourne, Australia to see what came up and found a news blog that was about commuter cycling in New York and that there had been a bicycle recent accident in downtown Melbourne.

I also used Bloglines search tool and found some cooking blogs -- I found it more interesting to find other blogs by looking at what a blogger had on his or her blog roll than using the search tools.

I generally found the search tools for feeds not too helpful. What I disliked most, particularly with Technorati was the duplication of search results and how difficult it was to get out of the Technorati environment and to the full blog. I would not want to subscribe to a blog on the basis of one post -- I want to look at other posts and that was difficult to do in Technorati. Bloglines is a bit easier to navigate that way.

Looking forward to playing next week!

Week 4, thing 8

I learned about RSS feeds a while back from Michael Sauers's workshop. I set up feeds in Bloglines. I checked them occasionally. I forgot my password and didn't check them -- oh boy too many feeds, too much to read -- set them all to read and they all go away.

With the O! What a Geek program I rediscovered my password and restarted using the RSS feeds. I have some good ones already set up -- various blogs that connect with library things from cataloging & tech services issues to those to do with the Think Tank and future thinking. And then some for fun --with cooking & knitting. There is great information there!

I also have subscribed to several co-worker's blogs through Blogger and will use that as a way of keeping up with what they are doing.

Now I just need to keep checking in on Bloglines so the to read feeds isn't overwhelming.