RSS and All That Jazz

This week in the cpd23 programme, we are covering Thing 4: current awareness.
I really don't have much to say about this one. I actively use Twitter.com in order to keep up to date professionally and I also follow some celebrity-type people. The debate as to whether a Twitter presence should be purely professional or whether it should show our rounded personalities has been had many times and will probably continue to be a topic of hot debate. For me, I walk a middle line. I tend to keep things professional but I am not averse to having an exchange with a fellow professional about their cat's odd habits. Twitter is primarily a way to keep up with breaking news and events within our profession.

RSS feeds have been a staple part of my professional life for many years now, although I tend not to use them for websites of personal interest as I enjoy browsing in my leisure time. Professionally, the amount of sites, journals and blogs that I try to keep up to date with would only be possible through RSS feeds. It is a great invention. We can pull everything together into one reader. We can even categorise our reader to make it even more useful. And yet, I still have 400 unread items in my RSS reader. Whilst it is indispensable to have the technology to gather everything in one place, there is still the problem of having the time to sit down and read everything!

Pushnote is something to which I'll return at a later date.

Thing 4

Thing 4 of the Cam 23 programme involved a great deal of reading, commenting, and reflecting on other people’s blogs. So far, the diversity in blog type is teaching me a lot about presentation and audience within the blogosphere. Creating a blog roll specifically for the cam 23 bloggers has really helped me to keep on track whilst following the experiences and ideas of other participants. My previous experiences of web 2 tools have centred on Facebook for my personal life and Twitter for my professional networking. RSS feeds have become invaluable to my professional current awareness levels over the last two years. I have recently been more of a passive consumer of blogs rather than an active producer of content and I am looking forward to changing this situation through blogging for the cam 23 project.

The issue of commenting on blogs is indeed a thorny one: to comment or not to comment, this post sums up the argument nicely. I for one think that commenting on blog posts is an invaluable resource for the blogger, the reader who comments, and any subsequent readers. It allows a picture of opinion, a debate, to build. If anything, it gives confidence to the blogger that someone is reading his or her blog and is sufficiently moved by the post to take the time to give an opinion.

Like any form of social media which is open to all, all sides of human nature are exhibited. This at times includes the darker side of the species: offensive language, bigoted opinions, rude remarks. Once we open the gates of the town to free speech, we're on shaky ground to then moan about the opinionated comments of the metaphorical bigoted sheriff. Blogging is an open media, comments are thus open. There is a difference between offensive comments and comments to which the blogger happens not to agree. I think the tip that I’ve learnt is not to be too precious about blog posts; they’re not the first draft for that long-awaited novel! And although negative comments can leave me feeling glum on a personal level, I remind myself that professional challenges to my opinions lead to further reflection and a stronger future position.
 

In the spirit of cam23, I have been commenting on the blog posts of other participants and have in turn received some positive comments in my blog. But for me this programme isn’t just about developing my own social media tools, it is also about thinking how these tools could be used within the library / user interaction. I have been particularly impressed by the Medical Library's blog's ability to inform users of both general library information and current awareness within the medical profession. Comments are a positive addition to blog posts. They show engagement of the blog with the wider blogging community, they can give credibility to an argument, and conversely they can spark furious debate. Comments on a blog post can lead to further blogging to show another side of the debate and can ignite strong opinions.  So far I am enjoying regaining my inspiration to blog and am trying out tools that I had not previously considered useful. Even if I am struggling with my linkedIn profile, I am discovering that the key to this whole process is to try, to play, to evaluate and to only then form opinions.