I haven’t blogged much since I’ve been back, mainly due to the overload I did whilst I was away. Since then I have been extremely busy at work too. We have had a lot of change going on and a lot more to come, so there has been extra meetings and training etc. As a result of all this, I have been percolating over this post for a bit. This is pretty unusual for me, as I tend to be a “get it all down in one session” blogger. This one has taken several days and several iterations to get it here. So here goes.
I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately from librarians who are trying to deal with the same sorts of things I have. I first noticed it at Librarian in Black when Sarah started talking about trying to keep up with all her online profiles in “Sarah’s social network presences“. Meredith at Information Wants to be Free picked up on what Sarah had said in “Couldn’t have said it better“. I know the feeling! I don’t have that many profiles online, hadn’t gotten around to it yet, but I have had to start a spreadsheet just to keep track of all my login details for all the web apps I am using or intend to use in future. Thank goodness that there has been some streamlining of these with Google and Yahoo buying up things like Blogger and Flickr.
Then there are the feeds. I know this has been an issue for most blog readers and for many years too. For me, its only become a recent issue. When I first started reading blogs about 4 years ago, I started small and never thought I would go much higher than the 20 I ended up with then . Small and manageable and still giving me what I thought I needed from them. I added some out of my field, just to get a bit of the wider picture, then found more Australian blogs so feeling patriotic and interested, I added them to my feeds. My current list sits at 110, which includes the feeds for the blogs I contribute to (3 besides my own). I do that so I see how other people are seeing them. That list has been weeded down some recently and I plan to weed it down more. I survived whilst on my study tour with my only 24 feeds in my reader and although there were some that I missed, generally I survived. As many bloggers have pointed out, if there is something special out there, another blogger will draw your attention to it.
Another post which added fuel to the fire on this whole package for me came from Emily at Library Revolution. “Librarians keeping up and making time” talked about how a fellow librarian didn’t understand how she kept up. Ultimately, its a personal responsibility, one that doesn’t finish when the work day does.
Which brings me to the bleeding edge part. One of my managers said to me again recently that I was on the bleeding edge of what is happening in libraries and that makes me a valuable asset to the library. When she first said it, I took some pride in it, but now I am not so sure.
I love being a part of the blogosphere and discovering all the new things that libraries are doing, but in the past year I have been feeling more of a responsibility to do so, for my library and not just for my own interest. Having that expansion means that my frustration with being one of the only ones out there on the edge at my workplace is magnified. Now that’s my issue, as I took on more than I should, both in keeping track of whats happening and feeling more responsible for it than I should. As Emily at Library Revolution has pointed out, its each librarian’s responsibility to stay informed - whatever that level is. So for me, it’s time to take stock.
I love my work and I am passionate about Library 2.0, but I don’t have enough time to be on the bleeding edge of everything that it encompasses. We have so much change going on at work and that can be a very painful process for some to go through and painful for people like me to wait for them to catch up. I understand that, but it still doesn’t make it any easier to handle. Others are experiencing the same I know. CW and Kathryn had a F2F meeting of interested librarians in Western Australia, where they discussed the same issues.
So I will do what I can. First I will set myself some realistic goals - both at work and at home. (besides my family coming first regardless - which unfortunately hasn’t always been the case recently) That will probably mean cutting back on more feeds, really thinking about new technologies and what they will mean for me and my workplace before getting involved and more. I hope to write an article of how to keep current, maybe to get published in a local journal, but also to distribute to interested librarians at work.
I am determined to manage this and regain my optimism, which has been slightly lacking of late, by taking some positive steps forward and thereby hopefully regaining all of the passion I have for my work and my professional interests. Wish me luck!
