Thursday, 14 July 2011

Thing 4: Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

Thing 4 has been about current awareness: Twitter, RSS and Pushnote. The first two I already use, but Pushnote was new to me.

I have been using Twitter for a couple of years (DebsL72). To start with I didn't quite get it or see the point, but now I find it's my main source of current awareness and I mainly follow library, medical, e-learning and social media professionals (as well as a few famous faces!).  I also follow conferences and discussions, and find Hootsuite a good tool as it allows me to have multiple columns open to follow different hashtags.

I have set up a work Twitter account (WarnerLibMEHT) and try to promote this to Trust staff whenever I can, though there is little uptake at the moment. I run a "Keeping up to date" course where I talk about Twitter, but as yet have found very few hospital staff using it. There is a general view amongst staff I speak to that it is frivolous, and the fact that it is blocked on most PCs in the Trust doesn't help!  I'd be interested in other health librarians experience of using a library twitter feed and how many actual library users follow you.

I use Google Reader for RSS and have done so for some time. I subscribe to blogs, journal contents, news sites, and now the CPD23 single feed. I find many of the blogs I subscribe to via RSS can now also be followed on Twitter, so maybe don't check Google Reader as regularly as I should.

As I said, Pushnote was completely new to me, but I have managed to download it both at home and work. Still getting to grips with it, and have a couple of CPD23 people added to my contacts. Not entirely sure how useful it's going to be, but will give it a chance.

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