Jumping into the RSS stream

Thing Two: RSS, RSS Feedreaders

I had a little trouble subscribing to an RSS feed because IE was being "helpful" and intercepting my subscription before it could get to my Google Reader. Ended up using the cut and paste URL method to work around IE. I will have to see what happens when I'm using Firefox or when I'm working from another computer.

So far have subscribed to the 23 Things blog and comments. I check Mark A. Matienzo's ArchivesBlogs aggregator daily, but I don't think I want to add that type of volume to my reader just yet. However my brother has a blog he writes with his wife about their twin daughters (one is my goddaughter). They don't update that much these days (too busy dealing with the twins!) so I think I'll add it to my reader; that way I don't have to keep checking it only to see that it hasn't been updated.

I will hold off on adding more feeds until I get the hang of how to integrate it to my regular morning read.

RAO's 23 Things and starting the blog

Thing One: Blogs

I am creating this blog as part of the Society of American Archivists' Reference Access and Outreach Section's first 23 Things cohort. I've taken other 2.0 classes and one had us creating account after account willy-nilly. I stopped after the first tool, realizing that I didn't want to commit my real id and eddress to tools that I would not use (at least not soon enough to remember what passwords were). Instead I used guest access or played with my neighbor for the other activities (she already had accounts on a lot of the tools). Luckily the first activity in that class was setting up a Delicious account and I have continued using it though I have yet to find the time to replace my outdated web pages of links with a simple pointer to that account. Thankfully, RAO's 23 Things has planned things a bit better and provided advice about preparing for the onslaught of accounts (Thank you Kate!). For this class I've chosen a userid specific to the project so that I may easily abandon accounts. For tools that I find useful I will set up new accounts with my usual online persona (though I already know that someone has my preferred id on Twitter and someone else is squatting on my second choice).

I am already worried about keeping up with 23 Things. I spent most of today creating and uploading files to the wiki for the Handbook Task Force for the Society of California Archivists. SCA eats up a lot the off-hours I want to dedicate to things archival. Famous last words, but I hope to finish that project soon. But on another note, I'll have to get next week's assignments done early because I will be spending all of next weekend at the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival, a weekend of NO archival work.

Although I've set this blog up on Blogger, I do have two other blogs that are hosted on a personal server using Wordpress software (but don't ask me about manipulating Wordpress or I'll have to bug my sysadmin, er, husband). The first is Water Rabbit which I must confess I am way behind on updating. The other blog is for my reading group, which is a whole lot easier to keep up because others do the writing, I am simply the archivist. I used to maintain a web site for the group, but converting it to a blog made it a lot easier to maintain.