Monday 30 July 2012

Thing 4: Current Awareness with Twitter, RSS and Storify

Twitter
I have a twitter account: #walkerabroad. I don't use it very much. Well that used to be true. While I was on holidays I made a decision I would use twitter more. Now being that my starting point was zero, more could constitute checking in once a day. So a month later it stands at twice a day!! Oh it's non-stop go like the sales after Christmas!! 


I have found twitter etiquette useful. I wouldn't have used hashtags before and even now I don't use them every post, mostly because I forget! I am getting better though. I try not to retweet too much but when you follow Lorcan Dempsey it's pretty inevitable that you do! My three favourite tweeters for finding out about library world are Lorcan Dempsey (@lorcanD), Hack Library School  (@hacklibschool) and Deirdre Beecher (@biondairlandese). My three favourite tweeters for everything else: Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself), Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) and Centre for Book Arts (@center4bookarts). I do use twitter mostly for library related items but some things are seasonal such as in January I follow some  Sherlock related twitter accounts and in September I follow Downton Abbey related sites.


I like the saved search facility. I read a lot and I mean a lot of blogs. Ironically perhaps this is why I haven't kept up a much with my own blog...too busy reading all the others! Anyway from the blogs I learn of events that will occur and so save the search so I'll remember to rerun it later. The days of remembering to do things without having them written down are sadly long gone. Sidebar: I remember being able to remember everbody's email address in my head. I didn't even use the contacts facility in my email! This was back in the late 90s when everyone had only one email. Now I have to check four that I use on a regular basis!! 


RSS
As mentioned already I read a lot of blogs. I've used Google Reader for the last four years or so and I subscribe to a variety of blogs covering all the areas of interest I have professionally and personally. These range from food: Bibliocook or Eating With Grace; design: Design Sponge or Designing Better Libraries, fiction: Earth and Other Unlikely Worlds or Scandinavian Crime Fiction, and information: The Centered Librarian and Stephen's Lighthouse. Last count I subscribed to over 130 blogs. I could cut back but then not everyone posts as often as Stephen Abram so mostly do ok!




Storify
Storify is a new one on me. I joined storify via Twitter as I'm trying to consolidate my professional profile with one email address. Naturally just as I started to do work on Storify I found Scoop It! I could join both but realistically keeping one more going would be a challenge. So bye bye Storify. I've started using Scoop It! for personal interests so at the present it hosts science fiction related material.

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