Twitter and Facebook

Facebook and Twitter are really useful tools and have been part of my world for some time now - but both serve different functions.

For me Facebook is used for more personal things - keeping up to date with friends and family around the country/ world and less for professional things. I do lock down a lot of my content and make it hard for people to find me via searches. Having said that I have set up a CILIP Career Development Group West Midlands group page and I also 'like' various library related pages including the University of Warwick Library and Research Exchange pages. Having news come to me here is useful - although I would not necessarily engage with the content here.  

Twitter on the other hand is a different beast! I use it professionally and have found it really useful in engaging with fellow Librarians and keeping up to date with the latest news. I first joined several years ago - and was pretty clueless as to what to do and who to follow. But it did not take me long to find lots of fellow Librarians out there. The resource is great for sharing ideas, finding out about new ideas and resources from elsewhere and meeting fellow library people from around the country and the world. When I am working on a new project or want some ideas of possible tools that could be used etc. I simply post something on Twitter and more often than not someone answers with something useful.

Twitter is also great for promoting things - I used it to publicise the 'Librarians as Teachers' event last year. I also incorporated Twitterfall into the event to enable people who were unable to attend to be involved. In addition I have also followed tweets from people at various events when I have not been there - it is a great way of finding out what is being said. More recently through running generic sessions in the Library - it is interesting to see the increased power of Twitter in promoting these sessions. In several instances this resource is proving to be popular for students to get information about Library events. Twitter has certainly opened up a new world for me - and I would definitely recommend it to other people.

Time Management

Ironically my time management for this entry has not been too great - after a really manic week last week (including participating in the 'Library Day in a Life' project) I am now a little behind - so these 'things' are going to be even more useful! :)

Doodle
I am a regular user of Doodle - and think it is great especially to suggest a range of dates and see at a glance when would be best for everyone to meet. I have also used Meet-o-matic, a similar product - both products are really useful when arranging meetings with colleagues who do not have access to Outlook.

I had not yet synchronised Doodle with my Outlook calendar so this week was a great excuse to give it a go.

Firefox
Up until a couple of years ago I was an Internet Explorer user - but over time I have migrated over to Firefox - and cannot understand why it took me so long. I really like the design, speed and add-ons. I tend to float between Firefox and Google Chrome depending on what machine I am on and how the browsers are behaving.

Keeping up to date with...

RSS Feeds

I think RSS feeds are great - they help me to keep up to date with the latest ideas and developments in the library world and beyond. I mainly subscribe to library and technology based feeds and find them a good source of inspiration. Overtime I have dabbled with a number of different RSS readers including Netvibes and Bloglines - but in recent years I have settled with Google Reader as my reader of choice. It has a really clear interface and the ease of subscribing to feeds is great. 

My biggest challenge with RSS feeds is finding the time to go through them. The great thing about 23 things is that it has made me look at my feeds and sort through the way I store them to enable me to see what ones I need to read daily, weekly or monthly. I also want to investigate keeping up to date with feeds on my smartphone - something I have not yet thought about doing. 

iGoogle

I do not use dashboards that much but they are pretty useful - especially when I am delivering sessions on web2. iGoogle is a great one-stop shop bringing in links to all the different accounts that I use including Google Reader, Google docs, Facebook, Twitter, BBC news and my emails to name a few. In fact this course has made me revisit my iGoogle account and remember just how useful it is! I make use of the tabs and have different widgets for different needs under each tab. The idea of sharing pages is interesting too - but not something I have dabbled with.

The start.warwick pages seem to be going down well with students - recently in meetings and training I have heard several students discuss this tool with a lot of enthusiasm.These students like the concept of being able to access all their Warwick accounts (including the Library search 'gadget') in one place together with access to their Facebook account, email and other information.

Right I am off to revisit some old tools that I have neglected over the past few months and to sort out my feeds. 

Getting Started...

Image from iconfinder

So here is my first entry for the sparkling new Warwick 23 Things programme. I am not unfamiliar with blogs having kept one throughout my chartership on the Warwick blogs platform and last year I started blogging on the wordpress platform. My main challenge with blogs is time - I have good intentions and lots of ideas of things to blog about but being strict and finding that 15 minutes to write a blog entry can be difficult.

I may not be a prolific blogger but I do see the value in blogs and subscribe to feeds from several librarian and technologist blogs. I have in the past contributed to other peoples blogs too - it is a great way to get involved with discussions and share ideas.

I am looking forward to future weeks on the 23 things programme - as it is a great excuse to set aside time for looking at these tools. Whilst I am familiar with quite a few things already I am looking forward to revisiting tools that I have neglected and finding out about new tools such as Diigo where I have recently transferred all my delicious bookmarks.

So that is things 1, 2, and 3 completed - I am looking forward to next week's instalment!