Keeping up

Is it just librarianship as a profession that considers “keeping up” to be an Important Thing? That is, keeping up with publishing, research in academic publications, changes in technology, and “professional issues” as a whole.

Pointing to Alyson’s blog, Fiona at Blisspix blogged about how she keeps up – or what she tries to keep up with. From the sounds of it, my keeping up strategy is very similar to Fiona’s.

Fiona says:

…for me keeping up to date is something that happens through the day, every day. Most things I read come through my aggregator – blogs, links to articles, newsletters; sometimes Twitter, although I do still subscribe to a few email lists. I read them in chunks at lunch, at home and on weekends. I don’t put a time limit on it, but I probably spend a few hours every week.

I don’t try to keep up with everything – I have a few favourite topics …that I follow.

I couldn’t keep up without RSS. Seriously, no exaggeration. There is so much information out there that is of interest to me, whether on websites or on blogs, that if I had to visit each and every site individually, I wouldn’t manage to do anything else! (I don’t like email lists and don’t subscribe, but that’s another post.)

That said, like Fiona, I don’t bother to try to keep up with everything. Fiona’s favourite topics are “library 2.0, leadership, presentations and life hacks” that she follows. Mine? I guess I’d say Web 2.0 (rather than just library), teaching and learning (edu blogs are great for this) and a vague sci-tech focus (this is vague, encompassing things like watching what Google and the journal Nature are doing, following the work of a few sci-tech writers and publications, and subscribing to science librarian blogs, like John Dupuis’s blog).

I’m often asked “But how on earth do you keep up?” I don’t deny that it takes time. Every day I read the stuff that flows through my aggregator – snippets in the morning, and at breaks throughout the day. Lately I have been having computer-free weekends (I seem to need this at the moment), but weekends too, if I’m online. I don’t necessarily read with an aim in mind (although the ‘Sphere can be very useful if you are trying to learn something or get some information) , or read something just because it could be useful to me as a librarian; I let my interests guide me (why force yourself to read a blog or a website that bores you?). It does help to do this every day or as close to every day as you can – there is so much going on, and it happens so quickly, that if you only looked at your aggregator once a week it would likely be rather overwhelming.

I keep up by not worrying about whether I am keeping up with everything. I don’t think it is possible, even if you only picked one area and tried to only read only in that area. The beauty of the blogosphere is that it is a huge, roiling, boisterous conversation, one that you can just listen to (read) and learn from. It’s even better if you participate and contribute, of course. If all I was doing was sitting in front of my computer and reading, the whole exercise would seem like a never-ending, excruciating run in a hamster wheel – I would just keep on keeping on and I would not necessarily get anywhere.

The thing is that the technology now allows us to talk with like-minded people all over the world, and to make connections – and these connections help us learn, and we can talk and share and find stuff out and experiment. And you never have to worry if you’re keeping up with everything, because your friends out there will tell you the stuff that you need to know.

So, what do you do to keep up?