[CPD23] Thing 4: Current Awareness

I wrote the instructions for Thing 4, so I've got no "if it all goes horribly wrong, blame the instructions" option! I'm a bit behind as I had an interview last week, so prep for that took priority. But I suppose since I've already written a few blog posts on this, I should be able to speed through this one and catch up again!

Before I wrote the post for the CPD23 blog, I'd already been using Twitter for a while, and had been subscribing to RSS feeds using Google Reader for a long while. I find both incredibly useful, and have been recommending them to people all over the place.

By robpatrick on Flickr

Being connected and being aware of current goings-on in the library world is important to me, not least because the job market is so rubbish so I know I'm going to have to really fight to get a job after my MA. Having a network of smart librarians on Twitter means I can get almost all of my up-to-the-minute news in one place, with blogs and news sites feeding more in depth posts and articles to my Google Reader. Huzzah!

Although I haven't been using Twitter as long as I've been using Google Reader, I've kind of stuck to the basics with Reader, while I've been using a lot of third party apps and tools with Twitter such as Hootsuite, twitterfeed, the archivist and futuretweets.

Having read Erin's post on this Thing, I'm definitely going to try out some more of the sharing functionality on Reader, and have a shot at Supercharging Google Reader.

Pushnote is something I hadn't used before CPD23. I knew it came on Stephen Fry's recommendation, but not too much more than that! When I was trying this out before writing the instructions, only one other of my Twitter/Facebook friends (Erin again!) had a Pushnote account. I was looking forward to the moment when hordes of CPD23ers would join and start sharing links. Since last week I'm now following a lot more people on Pushnote, and have found several new-to-me sites (worth it just for EchoBazaar alone!) which have been shared. However Pushnote is still in beta, and I think it has a few kinks that needs to be ironed out before it will be a really useful tool. At the moment it seems that friends' shared links and comments don't always show up when clicking on the star, although I think all are appearing on the Pushnote home page. Hopefully they'll get the kinks sorted out! I might try it again in 6 months or something. At the moment Twitter and RSS serve my current awareness needs, so I'm happy!