RSS feeds

Well, this task has opened my eyes to the vast number of interesting blogs out there - library related and otherwise. It's a bit daunting really. Even adding them to the Google Reader - which is very easy to do - doesn't give me great confidence that I'll be able to keep up with and absorb more than a small amount of all that information flowing towards me. Still, I can see that gathering the feeds together in one place is at least a start, and I like the way that they can be organised into folders by topic. I've added the Reader to my igoogle home page, so that I can reach it easily. I had a look at the 2011 Salem Library Blog Award winners list as suggested in the instructions for this thing, and I've added feeds for a few blogs from there that took my fancy, including A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette , which made me laugh and also reassured me that others share my daily irritations and frustrations with minor things such as chairs not being pushed back under tables.
I was already an occasional reader of blogs like thewikiman and Phil Bradley's weblog and having now added them to my reader, I'm sure I'll be following them more regularly in future. I've found the latter blog very useful in the past for technical tips such as where to find free online pdf file creating services. 
Moving away from libraries, I've added some news feeds and various other things, and I also had a look at the pre-packaged bundles of blogs on offer. These are useful if you want to quickly build up a selection of blog feeds on specific topics, but I've found that the titles can be a bit misleading. I added one bundle, called SF, assuming that all the blogs would be about science fiction, but they turned out to be about San Francisco!
I think this is a tool I'll keep using long-term, but I think I'll have to restrain myself from adding too many feeds, as I think many of them would never actually get read!

Adventures in blogging

I found the process of creating this blog very straightforward, and now that I've finally found some time to play around with the design, I'm a lot happier with how it looks. I've selected a background that seems more appropriate for the blog title I'm using, and I've made some alterations to fonts and text colours etc. I've added search and link gadgets, and moved all the gadgets around a bit. I found all this fairly easy to accomplish, and I particularly appreciate the previews you get of each slight change you make, so you can decide what works best before applying it more permanently. It is also quite easy to reverse any changes you make. The potential for tweaking and altering things is huge and could easily occupy you for hours. Whether that is the best use of anyone's time is debatable, but the flexibility of Blogger does provide enormous scope for crafting something very unique and personal. It also means that your blog can shift and change over time, either to reflect changes in your mood and world view, or just to incorporate new things you encounter. I've noted, for example, that there are gadgets for RSS feeds and Twitter, so I expect I'll be adding those and probably others to my blog as I progress through the rest of the 23 things. Overall, my experience of blogging has so far been very positive, if a bit inwardly focused. My next task is to turn my gaze outwards, to the blogs of others, and start commenting!

Exploring igoogle

I've quite enjoyed setting up my igoogle page and arranging it to suit my tastes and needs. I particularly like the vast range of themes available, and I've discovered a very sweet animation of waddling penguins to add a bit of life to my home page. However, I found the process of adding gadgets a bit unresponsive at first - I'd add a gadget and it wouldn't immediately appear on my home page, so I'd add it again, and then end up with two of the same gadget. I also initially had trouble getting the weather gadget to remember Cambridge as my home town, and I added a "To do list" gadget and wrote a list, only to have that list forgotten the next time I logged in! However, all this may just have been due to my impatience and/or problems with my browser, and things do now seem to be working smoothly.
Having said that, from looking at gadget reviews, it does appear that there are many faulty or badly designed gadgets out there - but I suppose that is inevitable given the number available and the range of people that create them. I'm sure there are also many very useful gadgets around, and I expect that in time, I'll find the ones that work best for me. It is very tempting to add lots of games, but then I'd probably end up wasting time playing them instead of completing the rest of the 23 things!
At present, I'm not convinced that igoogle is going to make a massive difference to my internet use, or save me a great deal of time reaching the sites I use regularly - Delicious bookmarks and basic google searches have served me fine up till now - but I realise that I've only just begun to explore its functionality, and there are many more aspects to learn, such as incorporating RSS feeds, so I'll try to keep an open mind for now.
Right, now I need to get back to customizing this blog, and then my next post will let you know how I've got on with that!

Beginnings

So, here we go. A brand new blog to play with. To introduce myself, I'm Anna, and I work at King's College Library. I've created this blog as part of the Cambridge 23 Things programme since I thought it was about time I got a bit more familiar with social media. My previous experience extends only as far as using Delicious social bookmarking to set up lists of useful links for our students. One such list covers sources for free online texts and has been posted on the King's College Library facebook page, set up and managed by my colleague, Gareth.
I'm hoping this programme will introduce me not only to lots of other useful tools but also to lots of interesting Cambridge library bloggers!