Thing 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

So Thing 4 was all about tools to facilitate personal current awareness, and for me this proved to be a useful reminder of, and an incentive to use more actively, a couple of these.

What I did?

I've been a Twitter user for a number of years now, and have found it really useful when following discussions at professional conferences and events. It's a great way to keep up to date with professional issues, and to have a wider understanding of the library world. As a legal librarian I follow several people from BIALL (e.g. jimmy1712 - James Mullen), CILIP (e.g. CILIP- Info), Welsh organisations (e,g, Institute of Welsh Affairs, Bevan Foundation), and some interesting professionals who are regular tweeters (e.g. Jo Alcock, Phil Bradley, Karen Blakeman). As a result of CPD23 I updated my profile in Twitter and in doing so noted that there is a Twitter gadget for Blogger. So I've added that to my blog pages. I tweet as StepGreg. The Twitter gadget appears at the bottom right of my Blogger screen.

I used to use Google Reader extensively when compiling current awareness bulletins in my previous role as Policy Support Librarian for Local Government / Social Justice in the Welsh Government. On revisiting Reader I updated my subscription feeds. At this stage this mainly meant removing subscriptions that are no longer relevant to me, but it was good to note that my new Blogger followings have also been added to my Reader account. Google Reader / RSS feeds can be a really helpful tool for wider professional awareness. I particularly like posting from Sue Hill Recruitment - the team blog on a wide range of issues. Tom Roper has also been undertaking CPD 23 Things, so it has been interesting following his progress, but he also provides fascinating horse racing tips. Just goes to prove how multi-faceted people can be!

Pushnote seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure that it's for me. My reservations are two fold:

• The need to install software will mean that it is not possible to use Pushnote in work (IT security restrictions);
• I was disappointed that I couldn't locate my key professional contacts to follow via Pushnote.

If I had found some of "library idols" using Pushnote then I might have been more thrilled. An interesting idea .. but perhaps not for me.

So what? What next?

This has been a really useful reminder of both Twitter and Google Reader (for RSS feeds). I have trimmed my Reader subscriptions so that this will now be more pertinent to my current role and interests. I will continue to seek out and subscribe to relevant feeds. Furthermore, now that the security curtain on using Twitter and other social media tools in work has been slightly lifted, then I should explore using Twitter more throughout my working day. Tweets are designed to be reasonably spontaneous; pertinent replies can only be relevant and of worth if posted promptly.

I will keep my eye on Pushnote and see how my colleagues fared with this too. I will be interested to see if their views and experiences differed!

Returning to Thing 3 - My web presence .... I have considered updating my Twitter name to Stepheninlibraryland. However, this name is too long for Twitter. In order to overcome this I have linked in my blog to Twitter, and updated my Twitter profile to indicate that I blog as Stepheninlibraryland.