Filed under: cpd23
I read quite a few blogs – I currently subscribe to 96 via Google reader of which around 35 are library-related (my personally-imposed limit is 100 subscriptions, and I purged 5 or 6 this morning in preparation for signing up to a few more as a result of this programme!) – and I do get a bit ovewhelmed by the number of posts which build up if I don’t manage to give them regular attention. That said, this has improved a lot since I’ve bought a smartphone, as I can access them whenever I want.
However, whilst I read and often enjoy everyones’ efforts, I tend not to comment, even though I absolutely love getting comments on my blog whenever I post something (which makes it even more churlish of me not to engage more). I guess my excuse is that I often feel I don’t have anything useful to add. I am more likely to tweet something though, particularly when I just want to say ‘great post’, and I wonder if tweets are starting to replace blog comments except in cases where the commenter has something involved or lengthy to say. Consuming blogs mainly via Google reader also imposes a barrier to commenting as it I need to click through to the actual blog in order to do so, though really that’s just laziness!
So my mission for this week is to make a few comments, and I’ll try to update this post once I’ve done so. I’m on leave as of Friday though, and it’s going to be a bit hectic up until then, but will definitely try to make time…
Update: 22 June – am really enjoying commenting and responding to comments, definitely need to get into the habit of doing this as it’s a good thing in lots of ways, and doesn’t actually have to take much time!
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Libraries, the universe and everything 
I have 501 blogs but a few of those are repeats. I also love getting comments so here is one! Very interesting to hear your limit of 100. What are the non-library blogs about?
Tina
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Comment by Tina Reynolds June 21, 2011 @ 13:43How do you find the time to read 501 blogs?!!! My non-lib ones are about cycling, knitting, London stuff, gluten-free (mainly) food, and sciency stuff for work
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Comment by Emma Davidson June 21, 2011 @ 13:57Checking I see I have 127 at present but more than a few of those seem largely defunct and others are often just wiped clean after a few posts rather than read in depth (mostly the frivolous ones).
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Comment by africker June 21, 2011 @ 13:59I think the growth of twitter has been in part at the expense of blog comments.
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Comment by africker June 21, 2011 @ 13:48I’ve currently got 78 solely work feeds, and had been splitting the library feeds off into another account (which also had craft and lifestyle feeds), so I could read them at other times, but I found that when I went home, after spending all day monitoring the feeds for work, the last thing I wanted to do was look at more feeds!
So, I’ve started shifting the library feeds back into my work feed reader, and started regarding them as “work”, and therefore justifiable for me to look at in work time.
I couldn’t cope with 501 blog feeds! *gibbers at the thought*
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Comment by Dumpling June 21, 2011 @ 16:42I ended up making this conversation in part the topic of my Thing 2!
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Comment by africker June 21, 2011 @ 18:04[…] 2 is to read around some of the other blogs. I have wandered through more than few today making comments here and there. I found some from the health tag in the delicious set, some from […]
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Pingback by CPD23 Thing 2 – whole lot of reading « (the) health informaticist June 21, 2011 @ 18:03Here I have to confess that I subscribe to 1478. I don’t, as you will realise, read all those….some are there for information and I use NetNewsWire’s SmartList to filter out the items I need. Every so often, I go through and weed out ones who haven’t posted in living memory, but there’s always some that I keep, because I enjoyed reading them in the past, and I hope they may start writing again
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Comment by Tom Roper June 22, 2011 @ 12:48Wow!
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Comment by Emma Davidson June 22, 2011 @ 12:54By no means all of those are professional. Feeds from news organisations (eg BBC, Guardian, NYT, Le Monde etc) make up an awful lot of them. And there’s all sorts of running, swimming, sailing, horse-racing, music, literature, etc ones.
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Comment by Tom Roper June 22, 2011 @ 13:06I think my issue is the volume of items coming in on the feeds: on 2 work ones alone there can be 1000 posts a week or more. And I HAVE to look through every one of them in order to see if they’re relevant. My work feed reader usually sits at 1000+ unread items just for one folder. and i have to try and be on top of them – no point in an internal current awareness service being out of date!
My personal ones I’ll leave to build up, and quite often gleefully mark all as read – if I can’t vaporise the work ones, sometimes it’s nice to do it for the not-work ones. Feels like less of a “read me NOW” burden.
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Comment by Dumpling June 22, 2011 @ 15:04I currently subscribe to 222… I actually thought it was a lot more than that. I cope by dividing these into categories i.e. must reads / fun etc. I love blogs like Boing Boing but am always totally overwhelmed with the amount of unread posts that build up over a couple of days. I must say I make use of the ‘mark all as read’ option A LOT. I star things that I want to read later when I’ve got more time though.
Google Reader has a really handy Trends thing as well that gives an overview of what I’ve read, starred, shared etc. When I get bored of blogs I unsubscribe! Must admit it’s been a while since the last purge but I do reguarly add new blogs as it’s so easy with the Subscribe tool you can drag to your browser’s toolbar.
Anyway… here’s a comment, hi 🙂
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Comment by Lex Rigby June 22, 2011 @ 15:06Hi Lex! I keep forgetting the Trends thing, several people have told me how useful it is, really must check it out.
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Comment by Emma Davidson June 22, 2011 @ 15:55Wow, I thought that I was a serial subscriber with 216 subs! I clean mine out regularly with defunct ones going and sometimes I just ‘mark all as read’ blogs which post LOTS like tastespotting or apartment therapy. I only subscribe to about 20 library blogs, but I think that will grow with cpd23 🙂
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Comment by libraryhelen June 22, 2011 @ 15:19I have 173 feeds in my GReader, although some of those are either infrequent updaters or things I can skim through (image blogs, mostly). They’re a mix of work and non-work things!
I am, however, much like you, someone who finds it harder to jump through from my feeds to the actual post to leave a comment but I’m trying to work on that!
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Comment by Meg Jones June 22, 2011 @ 15:21I think I need to weed my lists! I pretty much only have library blogs so I haven’t used any folders and filtering so that should be next thing to do. I also really need to do the whole commenting thing – tend to read offline!
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Comment by Tina Reynolds June 22, 2011 @ 23:27Emma, you’ve clearly struck a chord with fellow participants that may well resound throughout the CPD23 programme. It’s the sheer volume and effort of keeping up that put me off Twitter for example, I quite like the idea of self-imposed number limit, though not all feeds are equal. I’m adding your blog just the same.
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Comment by Tabitha Driver June 25, 2011 @ 15:19I just started using Twitter and do find the speed of it and the number of posts a little disorientating. I think I may limit the number of people/organisations I follow to start with.
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Comment by Vicki Case June 27, 2011 @ 22:47I’ve just had a count up and have only about 30 divided between libraries, eLearning and news with a few random ones not included in this count. I use netvibes as my reader and am itching to set up feeds for other cpd23 bloggs, but will wait for the “official” one in a few weeks. I don’t know how Tom copes with all his!
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Comment by Lindsay Wallace June 25, 2011 @ 22:21I am following 13 library blogs plus a few others and I was wondering how am I going to keep up with all of them.
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Comment by Erica Beache June 26, 2011 @ 20:33For a library science project I talked to a the editor of a local newspaper. He told me that the websites & blogs are like TV channels…it doesn’t matter how many you have because you’ll only actively watch a couple.
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Comment by Linnea June 28, 2011 @ 21:00Hi, I’m also doing CPD23 and I find it’s encouraging me to comment on blog posts. I very rarely comment, but I think it’s important to do so.
My Google Reader is pretty packed, but I like having a wide variety of things to read when I’m bored. I’m also pretty excited at the idea of finding a community of librarians to interact with =)
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Comment by Droo June 30, 2011 @ 02:01Hello all, and thanks for commenting! I’ve just got back from a week of holiday with limited internet access, so sorry for delays in releasing comments and lack of personal replies. Am currently trying to deal with over 600 unread posts in my Google reader – there are lots which are getting the ‘mark all as read’ treatment, but plenty which I do actually want to read… Time to make another cup of coffee, methinks 🙂
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Comment by Emma Davidson July 3, 2011 @ 14:16[…] What I really like is that Emma is able to keep her posts very short! I am also impressed by her “personally-imposed limit of 100 [blog] subscriptions” which has led to a lot of people commenting on the number of blogs they subscribe to. I am still […]
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Pingback by Cpd 23: Thing 2 – Investigate some other blogs | Books, balls and business July 24, 2011 @ 00:44